iPhone Has Five Years With AT&T
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Well for those hoping the iPhone will be available with other carriers sooner or later, it looks like later it will be. USA Today is reporting AT&T has an exclusive five year contract with Apple, and that Apple is restricted from creating a CDMA version during that time.
The CEO of wireless at AT&T had this to say:
“I’m glad we have (the iPhone) in our bag,” he says. “Others will try to match it, but for a period of time, they’re going to be playing catch-up.”
This is disappointing news for me as I was expecting the iPhone to be widely available in about two years. I look forward to the iPhone release, but I’m still going to wait to see the final product before even thinking about switching carriers.
2 Comments
CB
May 24th, 2007
at 5:53am
It makes sense - Apple had to have a carrier that would agree to not impose the traditional “branding” upon the phone and give Apple ABSOLUTE control over the phone’s functionality and overall user experience.
I have a Nokia N75 and Cingular has done some pretty boneheaded stuff to it like force the media player to run all the time and prevent the owner of the phone from disabling power-hungry 3G connections if they don’t need it.
This will allow Apple to send out the phone without any revenue-based “tweaking” by the carrier.
A great idea that should be considered by more phone manufacturers…
William
May 24th, 2007
at 4:08pm
I think Apple doubt success of iPhone, so get support from Cingular