It’s official now.

Wireless carrier AT&T’s monopoly over selling the hot iPhone in the U.S. is over.

Starting February 10, Apple’s iPhone, the world’s favorite smartphone, will also be offered by Verizon Wireless to its subscribers in the U.S.

If you are an existing Verizon customer, you can ore-order the iPhone 4 on February 3.

Since the iPhone’s launch on June 29, 2007 AT&T has been the sole carrier to offer the device in the U.S. Although you can buy the iPhone at Apple stores too, the phone could be used only on AT&T’s mobile network in the U.S.

Verizon’s iPhone 4 will cost the same as the ones at AT&T – $199.99 for the 16GB model and $299.99 for the 32GB model with a new two year contract.

No word yet on the data plans to be offered by Verizon.

Limitations
From what we’ve gathered, there are some limitations with the Verizon-offered iPhone, the primary one being lack of multitasking capabilities.

This means that you can’t talk and browse/check e-mail at the same time. An update later this year is expected to fix that issue.

But that may not be a big dampener because many passionate iPhone aficionados have stood on the sidelines, waiting for the iPhone to come to Verizon, which is considered to run a superior network compared to AT&T.

Blogs and online discussion boards have been rife with griping from AT&T’s iPhone customers about the high rate of dropped calls and other quality issues.

Since its launch in June 2007, the iPhone has become one of the hottest digital media gadgets winning plaudits and fans around the world. And, of course, the occasional brickbat as well.

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