Doin' the wacky AT&T math

ddAnyone know if the no contract 3G phones that they intend to sell can be activated by Verizon Wireless? I am nonot an AT & T fan. Does Verizon have a plan to accomodate Apple's 3G phone?

A.) Most of the revenue this phone is to make is not thrugh the initial sale of the handset, but by the contract.

b.) If you make it too easy to get around a.), then you outsell yourself and cut your potentioal profit margin, 600 dollars is actually cheaper than i expected them to bump the price to.


Is there a way to turn off one of the commenters from this TUAW feed, im so sick and tired about Erica Saduns moaning and grianing about a product she tries to make into something it is not.

I don't understand the no-plan premium. AT&T charges $175 to break a contract (according to David Pogue's interview with an AT&T spokesmonster), which puts a contract-free iPhone at only $375. (Plus they pro-rate your months-to-date on your phone, so if you stick around for a while, that fee decreases)

Here's the math that *I* don't like:

We are currently a one iPhone family and would like to become a two phone family. (We had to wait until this June until my contract with another carrier ran out, and of course by then all the Gen 1 iPhones were sold out and we had no choice but to wait for for Gen 2 no matter what the stupid AT&T math was.)

My husband's iPhone contract costs $59.99/mo currently because he has the old plan. If we do go ahead and buy the second phone now, it will cost us $69.99/mo. What will I be getting for my additional $10/mo that my husband isn't? NOTHING! Because there is no 3G service in the town where we live! In fact, I will be getting LESS than he is because my plan won't include the 200 text messages/mo that he gets!

Oh, I almost forgot, my extra $240 dollars over the life of the contract is buying me a gps function that he doesn't have. BIG FREAKIN' WHOOP.

And still the iphone 3g feature a crappy 2px camera.

I think that it is not a bad idea to buy a ipod touch and to stick with your regular cellphone

I have to say that this doesn't surprise one bit. I lived in SA, TX for more than ten years and SBC (now ATT&T) ruled the landscape the entire time.

It didn't matter wether you chose someone else for your services -- ATT$T got your money, by taxation or undue fees or otherwise. That'd be fine if they paid their workes fair wages, but when the workers were on strike to ask for living wages, the city council and mayor "volunteered" their time to handle the jobs.

And perhaps less surprisingly on a national scale, a good portion of that outrageous fee you might pay turns into a donation to the Bush/Cheney (and Vitter/Craig) GOP.

Why Apple, with Al Gore on the board, signed an exclusive with ATT&T makes no ethical sense. Im stuck with T-Mobile right now myself after freeing my phone from Cingular (ATT&T), otherwise I'd go for the ad i got int he mail:

credomobile.com/painfree - they'll pay your contract termination fee up to $200, but they work on the Sprint network (CDMA), so no iPhone porting to there yet. Oh, and you decide where their money goes -- and calls to congress to speak your mind are free.

When Apple has the mind to be as open with their platforms as the UNIX core that runs OS X, I'll be on board. Till then? There's a boing boing joke about why it's best to avoid ATT&T:

AT&T billing site makes jokes about company's participation in warrantless wiretapping?

Plenty of other reasons to dislike this admin, but that one works now, right?

i'm getting a contract free iPhone 3G only when the now 15$ payg mediaNet unlimited plan works well with it. i already asked att reps if medianet makes use of 3G speeds when i have a 3G phone and they were positive about it.

but i'm only getting the 3G when this works out!

(Erica, test it for me pls? *puppy eyes*)

One last thing on the Contract vs. No-Contract route. Recall that AT&T is now pro-rating thier ETFs on new contracts -$5/month (no love for contract signed before May).

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/27/atandts-prorated-etf-is-live-for-new-renewing-customers/

I just spent an hour on the phone with ATT to get an uncertain answer to my question: "What are the qualifications for an upgrade pricing?"

So far, I've heard only that you must have been an ATT customer for two years using other equipment. If you've been a non-iPhone ATT customer for less than two years, you pay more than $199/$299.

Unfortunately, while I signed my contract in March of 2006, ATT's system shows a new account number created this March, when I moved back to California after six months in Louisiana. Those two area code changes show up as activations - even though I've had the same equipment since 2006 - muddying the sales history with ATT and casting doubt on whether I am officially eligible for "upgrade pricing".

I am surprised that you are surprised by the no contract pricing. Did you really expect a 3G with GPS version of the original iPhone to be cheaper then the first version?