[famousas]

looks like you can buy at apple and walk out.



Ryan: ok, now do i have to go to an att store or will places like best buy have it
Ryan: you still there
Kristin: Only an AT&T or Apple store.
Kristin: Not online and no third party stores
Ryan: at apple how will i activate it in store, will att be there?
Kristin: You would have to bring it to an AT&T store to activate it.
Ryan: so i can buy at apple and bring it to att to activate?
Kristin: Correct.
Ryan: thank you
Kristin: Thank you for choosing AT&T. Have a good night
!https://sales.liveperson.net/hcp/chatinfo/chatinfo.gif!The chat session has been closed by your AT&T sales representative.

[runger]

The question I want answered is this:

We have 2 lines. 1 line has an iPhone. The other has a blackberry. The iPhone line is my wife's, on our family plan. She doesn't want the 3G iPhone--but, I do.

Neither of us want to change our numbers.

She is eligible for the upgrade. I am not; got my Blackberry in September.

What I don't understand is why they care which line gets the hardware upgrade price--but apparently they do. She can get the new iPhone, I cannot. If we're willing to extend the contract, why would AT&T give a crap about which line the 3G iPhone goes to? Just seems senseless to me.

Further, with all of this activation, etc. why isn't anyone talking about what it might mean to try and sell a 3G iPhone later--will you even be able to?

[wase]

this subject has been beaten to death all over the internet; this phone is NOT CHEAPER than the original phone..if you want it, you will pay through the nose for it.
As far as being lied to be ATT, shame on you for believing what they told you, about something that was going to happen 3 months down the road..customer service people don't have a clue about what the future holds, whether its with ATT, Sprint, Dish Net, Direct TV or Comcast, so hopefully you keep that in mind next time you ask one of them about their company's "future plans"

[Irish2dabone]

Sundoggy.... great input... on GPS... I hope you are right! I only relayed what the "AT&T" salesperson told me three days ago when I asked about GPS charges, if any.... and his response was $10 additional a month. I didn't agree and lightly questioned it, but obviously wasn't going to "splash in the wind" so to speak with the messenger if you get my drift. Thx... guess July 11 we'll all know.... Interestingly, the $10 he referred to is the same amount AT&T is increasing their "data plan" costs by.

Personally, I continue to find AT&T reps leading me away from an iPhone purchase over the past several months, directing me towards BlackBerry, the TILT, etc

[nuckelhed]

Hi BIll,



The different AT&T data plans have been around for quite some time. I've always subscribed to the personal unlimited data plan and using a few Palm Treo's and then an AT&T Tilt was able to sync to our corporate e-mail servers and was never automagically bumped up to the enterprise data plan. I think its totally lame if they do that. Fortunately, in my current position, I will not be syncing my iPhone to corporate e-mail as a phone is furnished. I've used OWA and GroupWise WebAcc with the Tilt and the Treo's and did notice some painfully slow speeds, but only when on Edge and below. I noticed when on a 3g network that access speeds up a little and is much more pleasurable. It did look small on the Palm and HTC devices but the iPhone has the ability to zoom in when surfing web pages. Push is definitely more convenient than POP3 and the like. Data is data, how will AT&T know what kind of data I'm sending/receving on my phone. I was never bumped up to the enterpise plan and used push services as well as POP3. Let's hope we can still get away with it. B-)

[Irish2dabone]

according to AT&T cust support, only iPhone user's will be tied to a data plan contract for 24-months... whereas, TILT and BlackBerry user's, etc. can activate and de-activate on a monthly basis as they choose.

I agree, if you're an iPhone user, most would want 24/7 access to the data plan, making the 24-mo contract a mute point... but I do know of remote employee's who only travel once or twice a qtr. for a week that may have liked the option to activate and de-activate their iPhone data plan on a month to month basis seeing they have internet access in their home offices. Comes down to making those hard choices individually.

[Irish2dabone]

Famousas and or Ryan...

So that's a great live thread you have... and good news if true.
As I was reminded yesterday, and can attest to, depending on the AT&T rep you speak with, you may get different stories.
While I was informed a few days ago by AT&T rep, so that AT&AT doesn't lose revenue of those "unlocking" their iPhones and their losing out on SUBSIDIZING the new low cost of the iPhone 3G, when you buy your new 3G at an Apple store, you must activate it then. This seems to concur with what I was told this past Tuesday by an Apple store representative in allowing enough time when I purchase the 3G to activate it in store...
go figure.... guess we'll find out July 11... myself, I won't be camping out overnight for the new 3G until the dust settles... still too many expressed concerns by current AT&T customers on signal quality of 3G and bait-n-switch tactics by AT&T on existing cell #'s being brought over from other carrier's, etc.

[Irish2dabone]

Thanks Nucklehed, good info... we are in the same boat almost.
I am on verizon's family plan, and as most, have staggered contracts due to new or faulty phone transitions between my wife and teen. In my case, I am now clear and free of verizon contract as is my wife, but teen has until Sept '09 based on new ENV2 we had to go to after consistent failures with Razor and Chocolates. I plan on eventually jumping over to 3G which I have been waiting for since last yr, but will most likely start myself with Personal plan only (not going to enterprise plan since my company is cautiously waiting results from other org's) and bring my wife and daughter over after I get a cautious feel of AT&T habits and support. Unfortunately, I am hearing rumblings of inconsistent signals in the Tampa Bay area with AT&T, whereas I have not had issues the past several yrs on Verizon?? While 3G exists in the Tampa area, I am concerned with some complaints by AT&T user's on 3G... On another note, I may entertain MyMobile offering by APPLE in the interim? However, I am still struggling with Steve's claim of providing the "masses" a "more affordable iPhone" with the 3G, when in essence new iPhone user's will be paying a lot more to use it at the end of the day... IF you saw my earlier blog's on this.. if I buy the once "unaffordable" iPhone on the old plan, I am out $499.99 for the 16gig phone, plus AT7T's former data plan of $240 for the 2-yr contract...coming to $739.99 before taxes. With the new "AFFORDABLE" iPhone, a 16Gig phone will now cost me $299.99, plus AT&T's recently added $10/mo more ($30/mo) which comes to $720 for 2-yr contract, with a new total to use an iPhone at $1,019.99... oh yeah, AT&T is not including the 200-txt msg'g any longer at no additional cost... now charging $5 per month... so if you have been txt'g your family in the past, add on another $120 over the 2-yr's and the new cost for the iPhone 3G is $1,139.99 before taxes and fee's... Guess we need to take a closer look at Steve's new AFFORDABLE phone and maybe start "looking that gift-horse in the mouth"

[tmoswift]

I spoke with an At&t support or sales person on the phone, and he said to bring in your company's GSM number when you go buy a phone. The iPhone 3G does not qualify for the $35 dollar hardward discount, but it does qualify for the IRU 5% discount on both your iPhone data and voice plan you choose.

[wase]

MODS PLEASE DELETE...THANK U!

[wase]

you can just tell them the phone is for her, then, go home, call up cust.service, and tell them your wife hates it and you want it on your phone number..
They should then just walk you through the process of entering some codes and such, on both your blackberry and the Iphone, and her number will be on your Blackberry, and yours will be on the Iphone..That is, assuming she will take your Blackberry!

I do this all the time with sprint on our family plan, and its never questioned by the brain surgeons on the other end of the phone!

[runger]

The good news is she has an iPhone already, so we could just switch them back. Hopefully, they'll be cool about it. We'll see.

[aralim_1]

sundoggy said:

You guys who think they are charging $10/month for GPS are a little "lost." No where does it say that. In fact, ATT can't charge you for using GPS. They don't own GPS. GPS is a satellite system (military actually) owned by the US Dept of Defense and was declared a public utility basically by the US government many years ago. Free to use. For everyone. ATT cannot even control whether you receive signals or not (they technically may be able to do this, but they do not provide the service, GPS is not a subscription service). You may pay a subscription for traffic reports integrated into your car's auto GPS system, or some other data, but the GPS data is free, as in BEER. If anyone is paying for GPS, then they are getting ripped off big time.

Sundoggy, I think the problem here is that (a) those AT&T reps aren't too clear when they're trying to explain those charges, and (b) the original poster may not have understood or known about the different aspects of GPS on the iPhone 3G.

First off: You're 100% right that they can't charge you to have the GPS radio active. It's on all the time and picking up the GPS signal from the sattelites.

But, the original poster was right about being told "$10 a month for GPS service" -- I was told the same thing. Thankfully, I asked the right questions and got a clear explanation from my service rep.

The $10 a month fee is for live GPS Navigation with turn-by-turn voice directions. That's all. So, if you don't sign up for that charge, here's what you'll get with GPS on the iPhone 3G:

• Google Maps with GPS location, live map updates as you move, live traffic conditions, location-aware searches for restaurants and services, and text-only directions
  
• Geotagging of your photos
  
• Full ability to use applications like Loopt that use that GPS data to track you and the location of your friends.

And all of these functions work even when the GPS signal can't be picked up, as long as the phone can still use Wi-Fi or cell tower triangulation.

What you don't get is the ability to set up directions from Point A to Point B in Google Maps and

[*]have the directions automatically update from turn to turn as you move
[*]have each direction spoken as you approach it (e.g., "Exit is 300 feet ahead", "Turn left here", "Merge onto route 9", etc.)
[*]automatically recalculate the directions if you go off from the planned route (e.g., because traffic is bad and you left the highway before the proper exit)
[/list]

That's what the $10 a month fee is for. So, if you don't care about having live turn-by-turn directions, or you want to buy the GPS navigation application that Tom-Tom is allegedly putting together for purchase on the iPhone (and which you can bet will carry monthly fees of its own for map database updates and the like), don't worry about paying it.

I think that is the one service besides SMS that you can activate or deactivate on the monthly basis, unlike the data plan. So if you don't want it up front and then decide to use it (because you're going on vacation, driving to a job interview, visiting new clients, whatever), you can call up AT&T and have them activate it when you need it. Double-check with them on that, as I'm not a service rep, but I recall friends with the AT&T GPS navigation service who said they did that.

Hope that all helps!

[Irish2dabone]

Your dead-on... I may have been (or not) the original poster on the GPS interpretation from the AT&T rep... however, I may have left out the all important point you mentioned, just assuming that everyone used GPS the way I do (as with Garmin & Tom Tom) regarding turn-by-turn directions (my bad). I understood all along that 3G's GPS was able to triangulate one's location. Regardless, at the end of the day, AT&T had worked the numbers in advance of the new AFFORDABLE 3G and realized by subsidizing it, could make a killing off of us resulting in charging APPLE iPhone user's more in the long run had we paid Steve's original $499.99 for the 16Gig phone or $399.99 for the 8Gig.