The Long National Nightmare Ends in January

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Nope, I'm not talking about the Great Recession and it's jobless recovery. Nope, not talking about the two land wars in the Middle East (Southwest Asia, to be more precise). Think bigger! Bingo! AT&T will no longer be the only carrier of the iPhone come 2011. Reportedly, Verizon is seven months away from offering them too.

The story, though still not confirmed officially by Apple, AT&T or Verizon, was originally reported by Bloomberg News quoting two unnamed sources. Read it for yourself, if you are so inclined.

Chew on this:

- Apple sold 1.7 million units of the newly launched iPhone 4 last week in just three days (in five countries, including the U.S.).

- Since the first iPhone came out just three years ago, Apple has sold a total of 50 million of 'em.

- Verizon has over 90 million customers in the United States.

So, who wins and who loses?

Winners

Apple - Of course! Access to a new customer base of 90 million people, not to mention people who currently use other carriers looking to jump just to get an iPhone? Please!

Verizon - Duh!

Joe Q. Public, AKA Us - Now we have a choice of carriers. Competition is always a good thing.

App Developers - more customers, more money.

Losers

AT&T - The iPhone brought in 900,000 new customers to AT&T in the first quarter of this year alone and that was a slow quarter compared to others. Wait until we get the figures for this quarter with the iPhone 4 taken into account! AT&T's exclusivity deal with Apple has been a goldmine. They will surely still make money hand over fist, but will now have to share some of it with Verizon. Lots and lots of customers love their iPhone and hate AT&T's service. Let's see how many jump ship when they get a chance.

Android - Yes, you have a better teaser price. But, let's see what happens now!

Verizon customers - Memo from AT&T customers: welcome to our world. We hope Verizon's network does a better job of holding up under the weight of all those iPhone data hawgs.

The other carriers - Face it, you're screwed.

IT Departments - Groan! That many more executives wanting to access the company network via iPhone. Have fun with security.

Adobe - The Apple juggernaut only grows bigger. It's a bad day for you in the war between Flash and HTML5.

Christmas - Notice that the Verizon deal doesn't happen until January. So I guess we know what won't be the hot item under the tree while we are all on hold for a few more weeks.

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio