All Articles Tagged AT&T

Hot on the heels of O2 in the UK offering FREE iPhones, and T-Mobile in Germany offering ONE Euro-buck iPhones, AT&T waddles up to the plate to remind these upstart old-worlders how a carrier is supposed to behave:

The company is treating the iPhone 3G pretty much just like any other phone in that people who are ineligible for upgrades have to pay the full, unsubsidized price for the phone. [...] AT&T hasn’t specified what the unsubsidized price is.

Based on European conversions, however, let’s expect that to push $700+

How do you know if you’re eligible? AT&T continues to rock it old-school with nigh-impenetrable explanations.

UPDATE:

Anthony sent us in a note about his conversation with an AT&T rep who confirmed/added the following: Eligible upgrades get you the sweetheart deal within your existing contract, if not you may get the price, but with contract extension.

Hey AT&T, murky much? How about just posting a nice, clear, concise breakdown of the process per subscriber situation? Not Telco enough?

Check out the read link for the deets.

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It’s official, folks, the iPhone 3G is replacing the original iPhone, aka the “iPhone 2G” (which makes the iPhone 1G the… Newton?). Company-owned AT&T store managers received the word today:

Stop selling and Pull all 2G 8GB (sku:69001) and 16GB (sku 69010) iPhones from the shelves and immediately return to AT&T Returns Facility in Fort Worth Texas

Have devices ready for pick up June 13th or Monday June 16th.

…Which means this past week wasn’t just a crazy dream after all, the iPhone 3G is really coming. What’s more interesting: we’re going to have a full month of NO iPhone sales. What’s most interesting: What do you suppose AT&T and Apple are going to do with these returned 1st-gen iPhones?

Heck – let’s have some fun. This is a Wait-a-Thon post. Any comment here gets you entered to win that $100 iTunes gift card. Here’s our guess: those long-lost, landfilled “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial” Atari Games create a sort of blackhole of bad user experiences. Throwing a bunch of iPhones in there would sort of balance that out, no?

What do you think they should do with them?

Thanks to Bla1ze for the tip!

I should have put this into my post yesterday about the Top 5 Reasons I’m SO Upgrading to the iPhone 3G, but it didn’t completely sink in until just now that this was really an issue for some people. It was that off my radar — but I guess it shouldn’t have been, given this is the blogsphere.

DaringFireball did the math and figured that, even if the iPhone 3G costs some $200 less upfront than it’s 2G ancestor, due to AT&T charging $10 more per month for 3G data, and potentially $5 more for SMS, that works out to $240 or $360 more over the course of the mandatory 2 year (24 month) contract, and ends up making the overall TCO (Total Cost of Ownership/Operation) some $40 to $160 more for the iPhone 3G than the previous generation model.

But here’s the thing. TCO is only one buzz acronym. Another is ROI — Return on Investment. No cell phone at all is cheaper than the iPhone, but what functionality do you give up by not having a mobile device? Dial-up (analogous to 2.5/2.75G EDGE service) is cheaper than broadband (analogous to 3G HSPDA service), but what amount of productivity (not to mention patience!) do you lose to the slower speed? Cell/Wi-Fi “triangulation” is included in the old iPhone, and thus cheaper than the A-GPS in the iPhone 3G, but what features — including new App Store apps — will you lose out on by not having precise location services?

There will always be cheaper. You can probably pick up a great deal on a 486 running Windows 3.1 if you look hard enough. But cheaper is not always better. If it was, that Internet University that keeps spamming everyone would look better on a CV than Harvard, Starbucks would have gone broke long ago, and a Yaris would smoke the Reventon on a straight away!

In the end, you typically get what you pay for, and new usually costs more than old (until newer comes along and continues the cycle). AT&T (and other carriers) are no doubt subsidizing the heck out of the iPhone 3G, and are making that money back via the service plans. That’s their business. Our business is deciding whether the handset that comes with that service is worth what they’re asking for it.

$40 over 2 years for an iPhone 3G? For that investment you get a 3G speed and A-GPS location services (not to mention a flush headphone jack!) return.

TCO be d@mned, that’s a pretty compelling ROI.

Sorry to rain on the iPhone 3G parade but it has to be done. Here’s some not so great news about the iPhone 3G. The iPhone 3G data plan is going to cost $30 per month. That’s $10 more than the current iPhone plan. On top of that, current iPhone owners will have to sign a NEW 2-year contract to use the iPhone 3G. Meaning, buying an iPhone 3G won’t be a seamless upgrade in the traditional sense. Granted, AT&T won’t count the remaining years on your current iPhone contract to the new iPhone 3G contract, the fact that you have to sign a new contract plus the added cost per month just doesn’t sit right with me.

Look at it this way, the iPhone 3G costs $199. Hip hip hooray right? Not quite. We have to add the cost of the added monthly fees. First we multiply the 10 dollars more a month by 24 months (the life of a 2 year contract) which equates to $240 dollars more to use the iPhone 3G’s data plan versus the original data plan. Now for the simple math, $199 (cost of the iPhone 3G) + $240 (cost of 3G data vs EDGE data over 2 years) = $439 over the lifetime of the contract. That’s actually a $40 dollar increase from the current iPhone, not quite the ‘half price’ that we’re being marketed to believe.

Also, it looks like AT&T will discontinue their pre-paid, GoPhone option meaning there is no alternative than being tied into a 2 year voice+3G data contract under AT&T. At least before, some users could choose to use the iPhone as a pseudo-data only device.

Perhaps its because the old revenue sharing model of the original iPhone is no longer in effect, but it looks like AT&T has taken back control of data plans and is positioning the iPhone 3G to increase subscribers and broaden market potential. The carrier subsidy is theoretically included in the $199 price, essentially AT&T is giving Apple the money upfront instead of through a month-to-month revenue sharing plan. Do we as consumers win out? Depends what your perspective is. The iPhone 3G is still a great phone and a steal, but AT&T & Apple are obviously not in the same relationship they were in just one year ago.

So when the iPhone 4G comes is AT&T going to raise our data prices to $40? Will it stop? What do you guys think of this? Does it change your perspective on the price of the iPhone 3G?

UPDATE: Gizmodo is also reporting that the iPhone 3G can only be activated in store via a 10-12 minute process. Also, a fine might be levied to those who don’t activate the iPhone 3G within 30 days. It seems like the iPhone no longer carries that unique badge of being separate from the rest of the other phones in AT&T’s lineup anymore..

Another round of pre-WWDC mayhem:

First up, Ars Technica reported that AT&T followed the Apple Store’s lead in being sold out of the current generation iPhone (2007) model. Did Apple really underestimate demand so uncharacteristically and dramatically, or are they learning to wean consumers earlier this time? And any wonder the old iPhone’s market share has dropped, given that its been getting harder and harder to buy one over the last few months? Moday should fix that…

Next up, Apple Insider spread the unabashedly crazy-sounding rumor that UK’s O2 might subsidize the iPhone 3G to the extent of making them “free upgrades”. This links into other rumors of an ultra-low (~$200) price point for the iPhone 3G, with O2 willing to eat even that cost in an effort to attract tasty service-consuming users.

Lastly, Engadget works the bugs out of Google Translate enough to let us know that Reuters Italy has said that while co(?)-exclusive iPhone carrier Telcom Italia might not be selling the iPhone 3G early next week, they will most definitely probably be potentially announcing it. Wouldn’t be waiting for someone else to do that first, now would they?

Just prior to the original iPhone’s release, AT&T’s operation “Fine Edge” brought faster, stronger, better 2.5 / 2.75G speed to the GSM masses. This year, in a strangely reminiscent move, reports are coming in that AT&T is showing their 3G HSPA network the same type of love:

For the past few months we’ve been seeing average download speeds between 500 – 800 kbps with a spike here and there. This morning’s tests however, are yielding between 1400 – 1500 kbps.

Gee, could another iPhone release be on the horizon?

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Let’s recap the iPhone’s prices so far: $599 to $399 to a rumored $199 to…undefined? One of the more interesting tidbits to come out of the 3G rumor mill has to be AT&T’s CFO telling the media that no pricing decision has been made concerning the 3G iPhone. 

“There’s not been a product announcement. There hasn’t been any pricing decisions made. That’s yet to come,” CFO Rick Lindner told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York.

We have mentioned before that AT&T has not been as tight-lipped about upcoming products as Apple notoriously is. Perhaps a warning shot by the folks over at Apple (read: Steve Jobs) has effectively rendered the AT&T execs silent. Or could this possibly mean that the price points would differ between the two ‘partners’?

What do you think? 

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Last year AT&T took on temporary workers to help bolster their retail force for the days leading up to and the weeks following the launch of the first generation iPhone. So guess what’s happening this year, just around the time of the scheduled WWDC Steve Jobs Keynote on June 9 and almost spot on the dates given in the last set of release rumors for June 19?

Yup, AT&T is taking on temps again! Secret “Summer Project Pro” is a G.O. from June 16 – August 16, 2008.

Wanna bet their training will begin with “Now, this is how you activate HSDPA for iChat Mobile…” ?

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Rick Lindner, CFO of a little telco called AT&T, recently dropped some knowledge about all things iPhone, past and future, including word that AT&T now boasts upwards of 2.5 million iPhone subscribers.

At an average of $100 per subscriber per month x 24 months per contract x 2.5 million that’s a lot of green for old blue. $6 billion, to be dashboard calc precise about it.

(With Apple rumored to get $15 per subscriber per month x 24 months per contract x 2.5 million = 900 million reasons for them to favor those revenue sharing models as well…)

When it comes to iPhone 3G, however, Lindner was more reticent:

“There’s not been a product announcement. There hasn’t been any pricing decisions made. That’s yet to come.”

Tease.

Photoshop an attempt to recreate the greatness of Mike’s meme

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Adding further fuel to the fire that Apple Inc. will drop the 3G bomb on June 9th, during CEO Steve Jobs’ Keynote address, InfoSyncWorld is claiming that, once announced, the 2nd generation iPhone will be made available via AT&T roughly 10 days later, on approximately the 18th or 19th.

InfoSyncWorld further speculates on HSDPA, GPS, Mobile TV, and other oft-cited iPhone 3G rumors.

And with the time left before WWDC growing shorter and shorter, when it comes to speculation and rumors, no doubt we ain’t seen nothing yet!

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