All Articles Tagged AT&T

AT&T is currently selling refurbished iPhones in their online store! The 8GB version is going for $249 and the 16GB version is priced at $349. With no iPhones currently in the pipeline over at Apple, this is probably the best bet to get an iPhone online. AT&T has sold iPhones at this price a few time before so I wouldn’t look too much into it (read: this is in no way a rumor of Apple & AT&T cleaning out old stock before the imminent release of the 3G iPhone, though by putting this in parenthesis I’m well aware of the possibility).

Either way, $250 for the 8GB is a great deal any way that you spin it. Even if the new iPhone is forthcoming, you might be able to unlock it and pawn it off on the gray market. Or, you can keep (gasp) the soon-to-be old iPhone before everyone realizes AT&T’s 3G network is not all the way there yet and that metal is greater than plastic.

As always, these puppies are available while supplies last. So what are you doing here still? Click the Read Link and buy!

UPDATE: Looks like they disappeared/sold out! Sorry if you missed the boat!

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Let’s do some catching up. First, iPhone users had free AT&T Wi-Fi at their hotspots. Then we lost it. Then it popped back up. Then it disappeared. And now we’re going to get it…eventually? If and when they do decide to officially give free Wi-Fi to iPhone users (June, perhaps?), I will be the first to commend them.

Now Boingo, in a newsletter to customers, goes and announces free Wi-Fi for iPhone users, albeit with an asterisk. That asterisk being: watch a 15 second advertisement for 15 minutes of free wi-fi in selected airports. Boingo is also encroaching on AT&T territory by offering Wi-Fi services at Starbucks locations. This piece of news isn’t as cheery for iPhone users because well, we have to pay.

Since there are around a gazillion Starbucks around the country, I’m sure Boingo Wi-Fi and AT&T Wi-Fi would work just fine. But would AT&T work out a roaming-esque deal with Boingo to provide free Wi-Fi for their iPhone customers at Boingo-specific locations?

Now THAT would be customer service (since it is AT&T, I guess we can rule that out).

AT&T giveth, and AT&T taketh away. Or so they say…

Hot on the heels of an apparent AT&T web glitch that everyone and their blogs assumed leaked something called the “iPhone Black”, and some maybe corroboration from a UK accessory web store selling what looks like current gen stock under the “iPhone Black” label, reader Bad Ash points out that the Tilt (and maybe other handsets?) were also being listed as “Black”, i.e. “Tilt Black”.

Now AT&T itself has scrambled… er… stepped up to tell Gizmodo that:

[T]he iPhone Black dropdown reference on the AT&T Wireless website is just a temporary placeholder. The spokesperson says that it was used over the weekend for a “scheduled catalog update,” distinguishing the various iPhone models (4GB, 8GB and 16GB). Sorry dudes, the 3G iPhone is probably not called the iPhone Black. Unless, of course, the spokesperson was just covering AT&T’s butt, which could always be possible.

So, either AT&T is capable of perplexingly odd website errors where they unintentionally surface tantalizingly named product fillers onto production servers, or El Jobso chewed them a new one, is even now changing the iPhone 3G’s release name, and spinning AT&T to cover?

Or is that just what they want us to think?

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I see a 3G iPhone and it will be painted black
No more aluminum just plastic on the back
How do I know and why will El Jobso certainly freak?
Cause AT&T has once again gone and sprung a leak

Cat’s out of the bag and there’s no going back
Published on their website something called the iPhone Black
So 2.0 is coming and it’ll be on one of them
While others struggle to iClone Apple’s gone to the next gen

3G, business, gaming, and App Store fully packed
I look to June and I want my iPhone Black!

[To the tune of, and with profound apologies to, the Rolling Stones: Painted Black]

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According to reports submitted to MacRumors, users are no longer able to access free Wi-Fi at Starbucks and Barnes & Nobles Locations.

I am sure this is due to a “beta” phase for AT&T to test connectivity. Once wind got out that people are accessing it, they stopped. The fact that AT&T is even doing this is really cool; it adds value to the AT&T proposition for their mobile service.

Will AT&T Extend the Wi-Fi “courtesy” officially? Perhaps AT&T will offer customers Wi-Fi for use on laptops? Who knows, we are still waiting for an official AT&T press release describing their future Wi-Fi plans.

I think anyone will agree that whatever AT&T is doing, it will be better than T-Mobile’s offerings.

While the interwebs stroke themselves into a furor over rumors that AT&T might just subsidize the iPhone 3G down to $200, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber once again asks that he be allowed to retort:

So says one report, using one anonymous source, from Scott Moritz, a “reporter” with an appalling track record regarding Apple and the iPhone. The same Scott Moritz who reported in July last year that Apple had cut back its production order on iPhones based on a “trading note” from Miller Tabak, a note which, it ends up, didn’t actually exist. And, as we know now, Apple went on to sell more iPhones than expected in 2007, not fewer.

Speculation ensues as to whether or not the AT&T exclusivity extends only to the current iPhone, and not the so-called iPhone 3G, and whether or not AT&T may want to take a price hit to keep Apple close. Gruber, however, quickly points out:

This comes so close to uncovering the obvious and glaring problem with a $200 AT&T iPhone subsidy, but, alas, Hesseldahl and his keen economic mind walk right past it. The problem is this: why would Apple allow AT&T to sell iPhones for half the price of what iPhones cost in Apple’s own stores (including this one)?

What do you think?

The United States and England are countries separated by one ocean and two languages, or so they say. Yet Apple Insider reports good tidings for both sides of the pond this week.

First up, the recent price cuts on the 8GB iPhone in the UK seems to have had the desired effect, with both Carphone Warehouse and O2 retail stores experiencing increased demand — and even selling out of Apple’s revolutionary mobile phone.

AT&T, meanwhile, boasted of a 22% increase in profits and the addition of 1.3 million new subscribers.

Boom indeed…

AT&T is doing the right thing (never mind that this most was likely something that they were forced into). Namely, they’re going to pro-rate the cancellation fee that you have to pay if you leave your 1 or 2 year plan early:

Starting on May 25, AT&T’s new and renewing wireless customers who enter into one- or two-year service agreements will no longer be required to pay a single, flat early termination fee. Instead, that fee, which is $175, will be progressively lowered by $5 during each month, every month, for the term of the contract - [Mobiledia]

Good news, although it doesn’t apply to those of us who are already on a contract with them — just new contracts. They had announced this back in October, but now we know when it will actually start. Good on you, AT&T.

This here be a Wait-a-Thon post, comment for a chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card! Speaking of Wait-a-Thon, we missed a couple of weeks there because yours-truly was discombobulated by covering the CTIA conference for our sister site, WMExperts. Let me therefore congratulate two winners: nickbw and DaffyHercules!

So we have AT&T promising to be more “open,” we have the iPhone changing how they handle activation and rate plans generally, and now we have them offering a more reasonable cancellation fee if you need to get out. What else would you like to see AT&T change?

Information Week has posted an article discussing how the spectrum action is going. You remember, the wireless 700MHz spectrum action that is freed up from analog TV? Anyway, Verizon has won the largest segment of the bandwidth spending $9.6 billion to do so. Guess who’s number 2? You guessed it kids, AT&T. AT&T spent $6.6 billion for their share. What does this mean? Well for starters the FCC says that the bandwidth being auctioned off must be kept open and usable on any network; no more of this lock-down on a carrier mumbo-jumbo. Then there is Google coming with Android later this year…

So what impact does this have on the iPhone? Will Apple sell an iPhone on a segment of the open bandwidth? Could the 3G iPhone run only on AT&T’s 3G network and the EDGE iPhones run on the “open” spectrum?