While Apple executives have , the technology that underlies Verizon phones, there's no technological reason Apple make a CDMA phone if it wanted to. In fact, there have been suspicions for some time that Apple has long had a working prototype of a CDMA iPhone, in the same way that the company for years before it made the transition publicly. Those theories were bolstered last year when, , Steve Jobs commented that the company's campus had its own Verizon cell site. A month later that "the wheels are turning on N92, the CDMA variant of the iPhone 4."

The likely reason behind Apple's choice of GSM-based technologies, beyond the practicalities of its deal with AT&T, was that it's used far more broadly around the world. CDMA, by comparison, is used mainly in North America and a handful of other countries. This allowed Apple to build a single phone that they could quickly roll out to many international markets.

It also allowed Apple to sell just one model of phone: there was no need to throw jargony terms like CDMA, UMTS, HSDPA, and EVDO at customers, or ask them questions beyond what capacity phone they wanted and--at times--if they wanted a black or white phone (which, granted, hasn't been ). In fact, it long seemed to me that this would be the major sticking point of Apple going to multiple carriers in the U.S.--such a move would throw a wrench in the company's vaunted simplicity and streamlined product matrix.

But I suppose Apple has decided that most consumers these days can at least handle differentiating between carriers. And, as most of the major U.S. carriers seem to be gravitating toward for their 4G networks, a CDMA-based iPhone is really only a stopgap measure. So one iPhone to rule them all may still be in the wings.

That said, potential Verizon iPhone customers may have to contend with one limitation: CDMA-based technologies don't support the ability to simultaneously maintain voice data connections. So if you're trying to look up movie times while your significant other's on the line, you'll have to hang up and call them back.