Apple to Drop AT&T Exclusivity for iPhone Wednesday?

[Osiris]

Apple to Drop AT&T Exclusivity for iPhone Wednesday?

A little insider birdie told HotHardware that Apple's event on Wednesday may not just be about a new product launch, as they believe that Apple will announce that it is removing AT&T's exclusivity on the iPhone in the US. No word as to what carriers are stepping up to offer iPhones so I guess you'll be waiting until Wednesday for that detail.

This may not be all that surprising. Inside of AT&T, we are hearing that the iPhone is causing more trouble than ever before. On some level, having the iPhone is hurting AT&T's image. Because they are the only company to carry it, and it's such a data hog, it's largely to blame for AT&T's network troubles.
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[office politics]

hopefully verizon won't require a phone plan like at&t does.

then i can try out my idea for running skype on iphone with verizon messaging only plan.

 

[wafflehammer]

hopefully verizon won't require a phone plan like at&t does.

then i can try out my idea for running skype on iphone with verizon messaging only plan.

considering the popularity and potential of the phone..i'm sure they'll have some minimum plan requirements you have to meet in order to use it. Just like how many carries require a special data plan for "smart phones"...

 

[DoubleHelix]

Verizon requires a data plan on all phones except for the very basic models, so they would certainly require one on the iPhone. What good would the iPhone be without a data plan anyway?

 

[hikaricloud]

AT&T and Verizon are pretty much the same company when it comes to cell plans and costs. The only things i can think of off the top of my head that they don't share are AT&T's rollover minutes and Verizon's "unlimited IN" messaging. AT&T offered unlimited IN messaging for a few months then gave it the axe.

My point is, they pretty much of the same policies when it comes to how they run things. While I'm not that happy with AT&T as of late, they are pretty much around the same page as VZW in quality of business. The iPhone moving to VZW is not going to be some miracle super special awesome thing.

 

[synergy]

Yea. The point is that AT&T still has two more years of contracts to be fulfilled before customers can even think of going to a different carrier. The fact that they had the three years of exclusivity is huge. I'm sure iPhone plans were a large chunk of their sales...despite their whining about it using so much bandwidth.

 

[thirdshiftdj]

I have to say I don't know many people that have AT&T and don't have an iPhone or atleast one iPhone in their family plan. That is the only reason to go AT&T.

 

[wafflehammer]

I have to say I don't know many people that have AT&T and don't have an iPhone or atleast one iPhone in their family plan. That is the only reason to go AT&T.

my family is signed up for at&t and none of us have an iphone lol

reason being :

verizon and every other phone carrier had the choice between like 2-5 extremely craptastic phones in my area...while at&t had dozens

plus everyone keeps getting bought out, selling out, blah blah blah in my area..but at&t isn't.(I know that's not a big issue but like when verizon took over alltel in my area cell phones were down for weeks..and I wouldn't want to deal with that)

 

[KSoD]

I have a family plan and not a single iPhone. We dotn use our phones for web access. So there is no need for a iPhone. We have plans that include texting and that but we dont need the web. Most of the time when we are not at home, we are at work and cant be using the web access.

But hik is right. VZW and AT&T are very similar. If they do get the iPhone, expect to have to have the big data plan to operate it.