I have a buddy who works at Verizon and he claims the following:
There is no definition of "G" so Verizon can up its "G" status over anyone else at any time. That being said, an apple product on the Verizon network is not in the forseeable future. Verizon is going with Motorola running the Google OS as well as other phones running Windows mobile.
We have our great network and we are finally getting phones with a little bit of cool as well as solid reliability (network wise,,how you abuse your phone is up to you...)