AT&T removes on-line iPhone plan customization

Just thought I would let others know that I called up AT&T tonight and had the remove my EDGE plan. The representative did so and I checked online to confirm. I forgot to ask her to block EDGE connections and now that I've realized that, the phone is now OFF. I'll call tomorrow and have them do that for me.

Tomorrow is the start of a new billing cycle so we will see if the system automatically dropped me back onto the plan. Will let you guys know.

Um, I live in Japan with a prepaid registred iPhone. It's pretty darned useful even not as a phone, and when I go back to the U.S. I've got a nice prepaid phone to use. I love it. Personally, I'd only use the phone as a prepaid device (I think around $40 a month for X number of minutes and unlimited net), even if I lived in the US.

Edge beats the hell out of no data access, even though it is a bit pokey. I've also been amazed by the range of coverage. I've been able to use Edge in rural Georgia and West Virginia when I couldn't even get phone access to AT&T.

One clarifier: EDGE isn't required for SMS since text messages use the control channel.

That "technical difficulties" screen has been up (for me at least) for the last two weeks.

I noticed this screen last week as well, pretty sure they removed the ability after the story got spread around. That's a bit long of a downtime to explain it being temporary, since I can change features on my other line without issue.

I think you would be interested in read that AT&T made this decision right after making this one....

iPhone $27.99 deal put on hold 10 comments
posted by Chad W. Taylor

As predicted, the AT&T Corporate Marketing Department “slapped” the Colorado AT&T store and asked them to cease their $27.99 offering until further notice.

AT&T Customer Care got a lot of phone calls from the “hearing” people complaining that they felt it was unfair that we are getting “special treatments” hence the order made by the AT&T Marketing Team.

You can read more about it here.... http://www.deafmac.org/blog/

What makes me angery is that the so called "hearing people" are complaining, oh PLEEEZE! Hearing people have hundreds of phones to choose from, with dozens of plans. So many phones come free or cheap. Deaf people can only pick phones that has a keyboard, and must have a phone that has a data plan to allow them to instant message & email which is their only form of communications when out of the home. There is no way a deaf person can just go to a pay phone to make a call.

I think AT&T made up the complaint to stop the service. I think that AT&T need money and to do that it has to sell the iphone with a minimum $59 a month plan.

That is why I am using T-Mobile.

Off topic, but I see we got the new comment system here that the other Weblogs Inc sites have been using. Nice!

I would like to do the opposite: Keep unlimited Internet, but cancel voice because it is too expensive. I make maybe 5 local calls a month, half minute per call. And for that I am paying $40 per month plus taxes. Previously I had a prepaid phone from another carrier, for which I was paying $10 a year. You read that right, ten bucks a year. The first year its $100, after that if you pay $10 per year you get $10 worth of new minutes plus you get to keep the unused minutes from the previous year.

EDGE is what kept me from buying an iPhone. It's just too slow. I've got a rev. A EVDO card in my powerbook which almost always pulls speeds over 1400K down. Why would want to go back to what is essentially a few beats faster than dial-up?