We heard news yesterday that Windows Phone 7 would not be available on Verizon until 2011. Now Microsoft has clarified the situation, and the reality is a bit of a bummer. There will be no support for CDMA networks in Windows Phone 7 until 2011. That's why Verizon is not planning for handsets.

A Microsoft senior product manager told Cnet, "We had to make some trade-offs. Even Microsoft doesn't have unlimited resources. We had to prioritize doing fewer things, really, really well." The two major CDMA networks in the US, Verizon and Sprint, will just have to wait. The GSM standard is much more common in the world, which is why Redmond decided to go that route.

This isn't the first time CDMA has been kicked to the curb. Until Android 1.6, there was no support for CDMA. In fact, when HTC launched the HTC Hero on Sprint (running Android 1.5) they had to roll their won code for the CDMA network. If you've been waiting for WinPho7, will you jump ship to a GSM carrier, or wait for it to come to you?

A leak of new training materials today have indicated that Verizon Wireless will be making some changes to its plans starting January 18th. First off, Verizon is getting rid of the all-inclusive Premium Plan. Big Red is also dropping the prices of their unlimited plans by 30%. This actually places the cost for unlimited minutes below that of AT&T.

Verizon is making some changes to their data plans as well. The carrier is going to offer a new 25MB data package for $9.99 per month, but the full $29.99 data plan is still required for smartphones. The new cheaper data plan is geared toward so-called “Multimedia Phones”, which will now require customers to purchase this plan. This seems to be a category Verizon has just made up, and includes handsets like the Chocolate Touch, the enV3, Moto Entice, and Nokia Twist among others.

While we’re happy to see the big price drop in unlimited plans, the new required data plans for some feature phones is disappointing. Do you think it’s reasonable?