Verizon used to be the grumpy old grandpa of cell carriers. For years, it clung to a technology called CDMA. That’s the network where your phone and the tower had to be best friends before they could talk.
If you brought a GSM unlocked phone (the kind that uses SIM cards like a normal human) to Verizon back in 2015, they’d laugh you out of the store. Not literally, but you’d get a polite “Sorry, we can’t help you.” It was a total buzzkill.
But here’s the good news: Verizon grew up! In 2018, they started shutting down their CDMA network. By 2026, it was completely gone. Now, Verizon runs on LTE and 5G, which are the same radio technologies GSM phones use. It’s like they finally learned to speak the same language.
