iPhone 2.0, Analysis of Pricing Plans

This blog entry is for those of you who are going to get the new 3G iPhone due out July 11th, 2008.

On Monday (June 30th, 2008), AT&T released their pricing plans for the new iPhone 3G. I did a little homework for those of you (an perhaps myself) who are considering getting the new phone. Here is what you need to know.

AT&T iPhone plan page
http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/specials/iPhone.jsp?

My analysis:

We have seen a lot of new iPhone and Mac purchases this past year, and with the announcement of iPhone2.0 software, everyone is buzzing to get on board. ATT released its new rates and I noticed a few things that caused me to call ATT for clarification.

If you are a current customer (2G/edge) and want to upgrade, you will pay $399/$499 respectively. New customers and those who have ATT phones eligible for upgrade will be able to upgrade at the $199/$299 price point.

We know the plan for the 3G phone starts out at $30, BUT if you want ActiveSync to work, you will have to pay and extra $15 (total=$45) a month for the Business Plan (http://www.wireless.att.com/businesscenter/iPhone3G/index.jsp)

Text messaging is now $5 for 200 messages, and $15 for 1000 for new plan purchases (3G phone users).
If you have a 2G phone (Edge), your plan stays the same, 200 messages for free.

In conclusion, 3G iPhone owners can expect to pay $39.99 for a base plan (450 min + rollover) + $45 for Enterprise data plan + $5/$15 for text, for a total of $90/$100 (not including applicable taxes) a month.

If you are a continuing 2G (edge) customer, you can expect to pay your current rate plan of $39.99 + $20 for data. After being on the phone for over an hour with ATT and Apple, a gentleman from Apple confirmed through unpublished training materials that ActiveSync for 2G phone owners will cost $0. The reason being that the ActiveSync push will happen over the slower EDGE network.

ActiveSync is part of Exchange and will not incurr additional setup and licensing fees, as do UNT Blackberry users incurr. As soon as I update my iPhone with the new software, I will publish a tutorial on how to setup ActiveSync on your phone.

Until then,

~jg