I'm a current subscriber, too, whose contract is up on the 22nd. The best info I got from AT&T is that they're going on sale at 6pm on the 29th. I'd say SHOW UP EARLY TO GET IN LINE!!!

Interesting phenomenon, eh? Kinda like an early Apple Store opening event (my store (Tampa) was #8 and I wanted one of those 1000 t-shirts) or buying tickets for a hot rock concert.

If I was AT&T I would be asking my self why is the interest in iPhone buy current AT&T customer base so low? Is it because they are waiting to leave AT&T first chance they get?

I went to an Apple store yesterday to inquire about camping out. Apple will not sell them before 6pm your local time. They will roll it out in timezones... so watch what happens in New York as I am sure Macworld will cover it.

Apple was very little help other than saying "You should buy the phone here, not at ATT store (which very nicely is right across the street from our Apple store.)

To make sure I get my two iPhones, I then went to the ATT store, and I happened to get the general manager of the ATT district who was in town that day (and I got his card)... first thing out of my mouth was, "I have a crisp $100 bill for YOU as a person if you make sure I get at least one)... he declined which shows he has morals (good thing there).

Here is the info he told me, and it makes sense... Apple will be able to sell you the iPhone, but they cannot activate it. You will have to take your iPhone to ATT and have it activated. There will be NO PREPAID plans for the iPhone.

He recommended coming to the ATT store to get the phone because you can get the phone and activate it in one trip.

In light of what he said, it makes me think Apple will be selling the iPhone as not only a phone, but also exactly what they said it would be, and that's a widescreen iPod (6g more or less). iPhone also has Wifi so you can use it on your home network.. so its an ipod with WIFI... I am willing to bet you do not even NEED to use ATT... you could buy the phone and use its non-cell phone features.

I asked the ATT manager if he felt there would be a big demand, he said and I quote, "We have a lot of people asking, but when they see the price of $499 and $599 that eliminates about 70% of the people asking.... the remaining 30% look at the fact they have to come to ATT, and we have hefty deposits for most people who are interested (the youngersters, college students).. the deposit range from $200-$800.... take $499 plus $200, there is $699.... plus you have the two year commitment... I think there is lots of interest, but I do not anticipate on running out... it's a great device, but the price and contract factor eliminate most of the interest which are "tire kickers"."

Ok... its not an exact quote.. but thats what he said. I will be heading to the Apple Store first thing in the morning (dont bother camping out the night before, it goes on sale at 6:00pm).. and ATT stores will be closing at 4:30pm on the 29th, and reopening at 6pm... I will be at the Apple Store, my wife will be at ATT.. we will use our ALLTEL phones to keep in touch, and whoever gets in first and gets the iphone is where we will buy it.

Some useful info this guy had though... much more than Apple. If I can get an iPhone without having to sign a contract and just use it as a widescreen iPod I'd be pretty happy. For what it's worth, I was also asking about the EDGE network.. it is NOT 3G. It is in fact dialup speed. Alltel and Sprint have EVDO... I get sometimes 700K per second on my MotoQ.. EDGE is a slow old technology. When I asked Mr. ATT about this, he said "There will be five versions of the iPhone, the next one will support 3G... this one will not, and it is not upgradable." So, before you go buying an iPhone, remember Apple's ability to nickel and dime you.... EDGE network looks almost unusable for any real web surfing... unless of course you like waiting 40 seconds for a page to load.

Hope that info helps... I found ATT very helpful.
Mike

I hope it does mean VZW will lose customers. They have one of the best wireless networks, but they are an arrogant company that charges way too much for their plans and cripples their phones so they can further nickel and dime their customers to death. OM_user

Are you reading this, Verizon? As a company, Verizon sucks so bad I can't begin to express how dissatisfied I have consistently been with their service. But I'm not sure AT&T (nee Cingular) is any better. At least there's hope that Apple will be on their case to raise their level of service to Apple standards.

How many of you have actually used AT&T for data services before? Do you realize how SLOW AT&T is? I got one of those blackberry style devices (believe mine was by Nokia; forget model number since I returned it two months ago) and it had two browsing methods on it, all kinds of apps (M$ word viewer, etc.) and a pretty neat 3D golf game. The PROBLEM was (and the reason I returned it within 30 days and just got a regular phone) was two-fold, but both reasons amount to being SLOW.

The device itself (wish I could remember the model number) was getting a lot of reviews for being SLOW. That is it took too long between apps and functions and it also had a really bad interface for things like the phonebook. This is an area where iPhone can clean house if it's as fast and easy to use as the commercials make it out to be. Thus, iPhone could eliminate one of the two major problems I had with this experience.

The other problem was that AT&T (then just recently switched over from being Cingular) is that their data rates are dog SLOW. While it WAS cool to surf the net on this little device, it was AGGRIVATING at how DOG SLOW the experience was. They are only slightly faster on average than a dial-up 56k modem would be. Average data transfer rates were around 70kbit. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm used to 5MBit now (5000kbit) and 70kbit is just mind-blowingly aggraviating slow. I swore I'd NEVER go back to dial-up speeds and so I returned my smart phone and got a regular pre-paid phone and figured I'd wait until things got better. I'd rather wait until I get home and than spend absurd amounts of time trying to get something done at those speeds on a TINY screen that can't read regular web pages very easily (you spend a LOT of time scrolling around the page trying to read it unless the page is DESIGNED for that size screen).

AT&T can theoretically do 256kbit, but I never saw it while testing that phone. Until I moved a little over a year ago, I had a cheaper home option for 512kbit and it was plenty fast for most browsing experiences (5Mbit is great for big files, video, etc., but most web pages are slower due to rendering and server lag than your total throughput, so 512kbit was fine for just browsing), but there's STILL a huge difference between ACTUAL real world 512kbit download rates and a download rate that is more like 70kbit on average. Some sites with lots of images took unreasonable length of time to load. Having a browser 'no image' option wouldn't be bad idea, especially if you're PAYING by the byte.

That brings up the other problem with AT&T. Their data prices are out-of-line, IMO. I pay $40 a month for 5Mbit at home and AT&T was charging by the BYTE with the lower plans! But even paying 'too much' for unlimited (and phone calls are separate from your data plans, even though it's all the same bandwidth in reality), so just for their LOWEST calling plan + unlimited data, I was looking at over $60 a month! You're paying a HUGE premium for wireless capability. With free WIFI becoming very common, it's getting absurd, IMO. The phone I had purposely made itself UNAVAILABLE to WIFI because AT&T wanted me to use THEIR slow services and pay through the nose for it instead of getting TRUE HIGH SPEED Internet when available. Unacceptable.

So don't be surprised if Apple's iPhone is purposely limited to cater to AT&T's piracy-like rates. It probably COULD do WIFI, but WON'T because it's more money (and kickbacks to Apple) to use their SLOW data rates.

It's just a shame that a cool phone like the iPhone will be ruined by the lousy carrier they chose. Sprint is 5x FASTER than AT&T! I'd rather use a less capable phone on Sprint than have to surf at what is essentially dial-up rates.

I ended up buying a Garmin Street Pilot (550c) instead (less than one year's use of that phone I was going to get paid for it) and while it needs a separate bluetooth enabled phone to act as a phone, it's the best GPS navigation system I've ever used (all touch-screen enabled) plus it can play audio books, MP3s, etc. and use SDRam cards for expansion. Sure it doesn't browse or read Word documents, but navigation + phone is 90% of what I actually NEED on the road (my job is in system maintanence, not business), so for me that was the better way to go. I haven't read anything about a GPS capable iPhone yet.

IMO, the company that designs their mobile phone around the CUSTOMER and not the carrier is the one that's really going to win in the long run. iPhone should not be carrier limited or have any kind of limitations for using things like WIFI when available. It also should have GPS at least as an option for navigation purposes. I'm also convinced the first company to come up with a GOOD interface for typing is going to do well. Touch-screen has to be the WORST of the bunch, IMO. That Garmin unit uses all touch-screen and it's great for SOME things, especially while you're driving and trying to keep your eyes on the road as much as possible, but for typing in addresses it's AWFUL (you pretty much have to stop the car to do it). A voice interface that actually works would have made a great supplementary system, given a full keyboard is not a viable option. Now if someone could make a TINY yet full size pad keyboard you could roll up and put into your pocket yet unroll and use on a table or whatever that would work via Bluetooth with a smart phone, I think they'd make a LOT of money. Imagine being able to type e-mails, etc. full speed with your phone or other small device instead of having to play with those tiny interfaces. Pads suck long-term, but I could still type faster on a full-size pad than on a tiny touch-screen or those mini-buttons most devices use.