AT&T announces iPhone 3G plans, 8 a.m. launch time on July 11

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  • Reply 81 of 263
    snofoamsnofoam Posts: 5member
    I have ATT voice, but no data plan and it will be a while before I'm eligible for an equipment upgrade, so this seems like not that great a deal, unless they count adding data as a new plan, which is unclear.



    For the old iPhone, I would have added $20/month in data and my contract term would revert to a full two years, plus paying for the phone.



    To get the new iPhone, I still have to add a data plan and extend my contract and pay for the phone.



    I'm not saying it's unfair, but it also doesn't make the new iPhone seem that tempting, either. It would seem like there would be some incentive for AT&T to get existing voice customers to add a data plan.
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  • Reply 82 of 263
    physguyphysguy Posts: 920member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Contegni View Post


    I'm on a family share plan. My line is $9.99 and the iPhone service is $19.99.



    So, if you look at the family plan web site the new plane is $40/month or $10 more (+$5 for SMS) so it exactly parallels the non-family plan model - $10/month extra for 3G and $5/month for SMS. Very very consistent.
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  • Reply 83 of 263
    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer Posts: 7,503member
    $90 for 900 minutes reminds me of the days back in the late 80s/mid90s when they advertised 10cents per min long distance.



    Nothing new.
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  • Reply 84 of 263
    in regards to text messages, won't you be able to text through ichat...once someone develops an app for it? as most of you know, text messages can be sent through ichat currently
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  • Reply 85 of 263
    abster2coreabster2core Posts: 2,501member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    The outrageous price bump on text messages seems highly unwarranted.



    I am not sure if you can say that.



    Everybody has this impression, but it seems that it is getting too expensive to service and maintain. Sure it was cheap at the beginning because it wasn't taking up much space as it wasn't being used much. That is until they began adding keyboards and people found it fun using the 'new' language.



    Heck, I could never understand why my son would text message his buddy a couple of blocks away instead of just picking up the house phone. Then I learned the lingo and found out really what he was saying.



    In any case, text messaging is not just an issue with ATT or other US or Canadian carriers. Every place around the world have seen costs increased up there with gold and oil futures.



    Why? Perhaps, in part, the usage is so astronomical, e.g., over 7 billion/day*. Users aren't just sending one text message to one person at a time. Many are in the hundreds and even in the thousands. http://www.verisign.com/infrastructu...ge_042873.html



    But more important, until the message is picked up, it has to be stored somewhere and that is the dilemma.



    Why anybody would want to waste time and money sending and receiving text messages is beyond me, particularly if you really have to communicate with words, there are ways that don't cost a nickel more than you are paying now. http://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/05/6-thi...-dont-pub-yet/



    *http://www.gsmworld.com/documents/20_year_factsheet.pdf



    PS I know you like to look up statistics. Take a gander here and look at the growth rates in the past few quarters. http://www.gsmworld.com/news/statistics/index.shtml
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  • Reply 86 of 263
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Timon View Post


    Where did you ever read that. Current iPhone users will stay at the current rates. Only 3G iPhones get the new rates.



    I must have misunderstood the first line of the following post:

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GQB View Post


    As much slack as I'm generally willing to cut Apple, I'd be upset if I were a first gen owner now being hit with an extra $10/mo that is generally assumed to be AT&T's charge for subsidizing the 3G phones.

    And that's $10 extra for a feature useless to first gen owners.



    My apologies.
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  • Reply 87 of 263
    federmoosefedermoose Posts: 195member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Chris_CA View Post


    Uh, no. He wrote he couldn't get an iPhone for $199/$299, then proceeds to post quotes on how he can do it!



    How is that argumentative/trolling?



    His "argument" (or lack thereof) is kind of like saying that I can buy a new car for $199 a month but wait! I already have a car payment for $199 a month so I have to pay twice as much for a new car?!?! That is a rip-off!



    Wait, hold on. He said he recently bought a new ATT phone, so he isn't eligible for a phone upgrade. AKA, he can't buy the phone for $199/$299. Did you read the article/his comment?
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  • Reply 88 of 263
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,069member
    A few issues:



    1. The pricing is high, and it frankly annoys the piss out of me. $70 for a basic plan? And you know it's not actually $70...it's $80 when you're done with taxes and fees. That's $20 more than I pay now with Verizon..and that's WITH unlimited VZW texting and 500 texts to other wireless carriers.



    2. The fact that they claim "unlimited data" is included and then charge another $5 for texts is not right. That means I'm going to spend $85 a month when all fees and taxes are included. Wow. That's $1000 a year! It's $240 more/year than my VZW bill. Over two years that's a $480 difference. But wait...there's still more. I am leaving VZW a little early, so I may get nailed with a $175 early termination fee (which I'll fight). Then I get to buy a $300 iPhone too, with a $36 activation fee.



    So let's look at the REAL cost:



    $318 iPhone 16GB (with 6% PA sales tax)

    $36 activation

    $20 essential accessories (car charger, for example).

    $175 early termination

    $240 more per year service plan





    Cost to person like me vs. current phone: $789.00



    Wow. It won't stop me from buying one, but damn.
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  • Reply 89 of 263
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,954member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Foo2 View Post


    Steve Jobs stated publicly that the iPhone 3G would cost $199 (8GB) and $299 (16GB). No conditions. Obviously then, if AT&T charges more, then Apple will subsidize us for the difference.



    "Obviously"? Apple isn't providing the service here. Where do you get your wishful thinking?



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by guppy737 View Post


    World class fark-job from ATT here. I upgraded my ATT phone in March, not knowing what the story was gonna be with iphone 3G. And now I'm screwed on the price. That's cool, I'd rather wait than give ATT one more dime than I have to.



    The thing is, I've always understood that upgrading a phone at the best price usually requires having been with the carrier for two years. It's probably written in your contract, if not in the terms of the updated contract.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Keda View Post


    So, the lesson here is, "buyer be ware" ...especially when listening Apple's marketing.



    While Apple's marketing seems to be worse than average sometimes, you do need to pay attention whenever someone is trying to sell you something. If you did not know this before, use this as a learning experience. That said, I really don't think Apple is to blame on this part.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    The outrageous price bump on text messages seems highly unwarranted. I see a potential for a class action here.



    Either way, I'll just abuse the data more with IMs and emails that use excessively more data just for header info.



    I think charging so much for SMS is unwarranted, but I don't think a class action suit would be viable, unless they revoked your SMS priviledges without changing the contract. Personally, I suggest going to email anyway. All I want is a way to block SMS.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by aplnub View Post


    I was in line and purchased the iPhone on opening day at an AT&T store. I have a big fat nice plan on the phone. I agree with you. Those plans are a rip off. Bend me over AT&T.



    I'll see how long I can resist the urge. I am thinking it just got a lot easier to resist with those rates.



    The original is a perfectly fine unit. It's a little slower and doesn't have GPS, but as long as it works at a lower priced plan, it's fine to keep it, it's paid for too.
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  • Reply 90 of 263
    nasseraenasserae Posts: 3,167member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    That is what it means. If you are near the end date they can pull you in a little early from what I hear, but I think this depends on the CSR assisting you.



    If this true then I can do the following. Cancel my wife number since it is not on any contract and buy 2 iPhones (one as an upgrade and another one as new family plan line for $199). I guess it would work. However, I still don't see how it is not eligible since the Nokia was not subsidized when we bought it. I will have to call them and see.
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  • Reply 90 of 263
    bigmc6000bigmc6000 Posts: 767member
    Any ideas about the FAN discount? They canned it on the 1st Gen iPhone and wouldn't let me have it (only applied to non-Apple hardware). Also, the discounts only applied to the voice and not the date or text messaging so it only saved me about $10 a month (25% of my $40 voice plan). There's a number of back and forths on MR but nobody actually cites anything official from AT&T...
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  • Reply 92 of 263
    vineavinea Posts: 5,585member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by federmoose View Post


    Wait, hold on. He said he recently bought a new ATT phone, so he isn't eligible for a phone upgrade. AKA, he can't buy the phone for $199/$299. Did you read the article/his comment?



    Yes. The point is that he hasn't paid AT&T for the cost of his new phone yet. So he expects AT&T to simply eat the cost of his old phone because he was too stupid to go on ebay to get a cheap unlocked phone for 2 months rather than hose up his chances of getting a subsidized iPhone.



    He clearly was eligible since he got a new phone. Too bad he blew it on a cheapo phone.
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  • Reply 93 of 263
    federmoosefedermoose Posts: 195member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post


    All I want is a way to block SMS.



    I know VZW does this, as I used to block SMS with them. If you call ATT they'll probably be able to put on a block as well. Only issue with blocking is that the person sending doesn't get an immediate bounce, so they'll assume you got the SMS until 4 days later they get a bounce and realize that you weren't just being an a-hole.
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  • Reply 94 of 263
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by NasserAE View Post


    If this true then I can do the following. Cancel my wife number since it is not on any contract and buy 2 iPhones (one as an upgrade and another one as new family plan line for $199). I guess it would work. However, I still don't see how it is not eligible since the Nokia was not subsidized when we bought it. I will have to call them and see.



    If you bought it outright and didn't get tricked into jumping into a contract (which they will try) then you would be eligible. However, some special, low-rate plans require a contract which you verbally agree to over the phone. If that is the case then you would probably be ineligible.



    I'd talk to an AT&T CSR to find out about the exact details of that "ineligible" tag you are seeing for your wife's phone.
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  • Reply 95 of 263
    8corewhore8corewhore Posts: 833member
    I have a RAZR with T-Mobile for 30 bucks per month. It works great as a phone. For me to ditch this and get the iPhone, it would cost me another 40 bucks more. That's 40 bucks more so I can have data. It just isn't worth it. If I needed it for business, that would be different but I don't. I'll be sitting on my hands. Thanks but no thanks.
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  • Reply 96 of 263
    federmoosefedermoose Posts: 195member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by vinea View Post


    Yes. The point is that he hasn't paid AT&T for the cost of his new phone yet. So he expects AT&T to simply eat the cost of his old phone because he was too stupid to go on ebay to get a cheap unlocked phone for 2 months rather than hose up his chances of getting a subsidized iPhone.



    He clearly was eligible since he got a new phone. Too bad he blew it on a cheapo phone.



    It wasn't publicly known that the iphone would be subsidized. And ATT at the time said that it would be possible to upgrade with no penalties (because they knew as much as we did about iphone subsidies: nothing). I don't think his buying a cheepo phone with ATT was a reflection of poor foresight, especially if he was planning (as I was) to add $20 or $30 to the plan to get unlimited data (in which case it was good planning/thinking at the time). And no, we didn't expect ATT to eat the cost, we expected ATT to not be subsidizing the phone. Now we're getting slapped an extra $100 for the subsidy (vs the price of 1st gen iphones with similar storage capacity). Not expecting ATT to eat it, just annoyed.
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  • Reply 97 of 263
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by teckstud View Post


    "iReady"? - that's tacky AT&T for you.



    Another successful name thanks to http://iCantThinkOfBetterName.com
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  • Reply 98 of 263
    SpamSandwichspamsandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by CREB View Post


    I don't know who got bamboozled: Apple, iPhone customer, or both. Typical AT&T, sucker-punch you when you are not looking. Apple needs to become their own cellular provider.



    I was about to say the same thing.



    Steve: Time to put those billions to good use. Buy out Sprint since they are in a weakened position, rebrand the service "Apple Mobile" and put a fire under the WiMax alliance!
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  • Reply 99 of 263
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Abster2core View Post


    I am not sure if you can say that.



    Everybody has this impression, but it seems that it is getting too expensive to service and maintain. Sure it was cheap at the beginning because it wasn't taking up much space as it wasn't being used much. That is until they began adding keyboards and people found it fun using the 'new' language.



    Heck, I could never understand why my son would text message his buddy a couple of blocks away instead of just picking up the house phone. Then I learned the lingo and found out really what he was saying.



    In any case, text messaging is not just an issue with ATT or other US or Canadian carriers. Every place around the world have seen costs increased up there with gold and oil futures.



    Why? Perhaps, in part, the usage is so astronomical, e.g., over 7 billion/day*. Users aren't just sending one text message to one person at a time. Many are in the hundreds and even in the thousands. http://www.verisign.com/infrastructu...ge_042873.html



    But more important, until the message is picked up, it has to be stored somewhere and that is the dilemma.



    Why anybody would want to waste time and money sending and receiving text messages is beyond me, particularly if you really have to communicate with words, there are ways that don't cost a nickel more than you are paying now. http://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/05/6-thi...-dont-pub-yet/



    *http://www.gsmworld.com/documents/20_year_factsheet.pdf



    PS I know you like to look up statistics. Take a gander here and look at the growth rates in the past few quarters. http://www.gsmworld.com/news/statistics/index.shtml



    Thanks. I'll look into that. In a later post I did note that my assessment is based solely on the data size and nothing else. I alluded to a possible fee for the patent holder of SMS as an example of where the additional fees may come from but didn't consider the storage of all these SMSes.



    SMS is nice because, like an IM on your computer, it can be a quick and dirty discourse without having to stop doing other things. A phone call or proper letter takes away too much time and focus. Though not nearly as proficient as your son, I'm sure, I could type an SMS on a number-pad phone without even looking and while doing something else entirely. It has its benefits.
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  • Reply 100 of 263
    SpamSandwichspamsandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SDW2001 View Post


    A few issues:



    1. The pricing is high, and it frankly annoys the piss out of me. $70 for a basic plan? And you know it's not actually $70...it's $80 when you're done with taxes and fees. That's $20 more than I pay now with Verizon..and that's WITH unlimited VZW texting and 500 texts to other wireless carriers.



    2. The fact that they claim "unlimited data" is included and then charge another $5 for texts is not right. That means I'm going to spend $85 a month when all fees and taxes are included. Wow. That's $1000 a year! It's $240 more/year than my VZW bill. Over two years that's a $480 difference. But wait...there's still more. I am leaving VZW a little early, so I may get nailed with a $175 early termination fee (which I'll fight). Then I get to buy a $300 iPhone too, with a $36 activation fee.



    So let's look at the REAL cost:



    $318 iPhone 16GB (with 6% PA sales tax)

    $36 activation

    $20 essential accessories (car charger, for example).

    $175 early termination

    $240 more per year service plan





    Cost to person like me vs. current phone: $789.00



    Wow. It won't stop me from buying one, but damn.



    These insane prices are keeping me far, far away from both at&t and iPhone 3G. I guess I'll have to stick with my piece of junk Samsung on T-mo for another year or two. \
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