Apple iPhone to be available for prepaid users?
One thing we know about the Apple iPhone launch, is that we don’t really know much. Today we received a few screen shots that shed some light on one of the major questions regarding the sales of the iPhone — who will be eligible to buy this new dream gadget? According to some newly surfaced internal AT&T account codes the answer is everyone! We can infer from the 3 codes received that the iPhone will be available to Go Phone Pay As You Go subscribers, Go Phone Pick Your Plan subscribers (hybrids), and of course postpaid users. You heard it here first – prepaid iPhones baby! What we can also assume is that since the masters of prepaid can purchase these, anyone will be able to snatch one up, whether they are in contract or not. This means that if you’re not up for an "upgrade" you will still be able to enjoy your Apple goodness. Now if we can only get the official no-commitment pricing…Who are we kidding, we’ll have that soon. Check the full screen shots after the jump!
UPDATE: There have been a couple articles stating that feature codes are generated automatically when a handset is entered into AT&T’s system, even phones that are not available prepaid. That is true. What is not true is that these feature codes were not generic codes, these are completely unique and never seen before. This was confirmed by multiple AT&T sources. Does this 100% mean the iPhone will be available prepaid? No. It does at least let us know either that the unique, never seen before feature codes entered one by one were incorrect and a mistake, AT&T is generating false information to get us to bite, or the iPhone will in fact be available prepaid.
Remember this thing has wifi in it, which means you don’t need a data plan to access the internet if you have access to a wireless hotspot like in your home or work. Just like your laptop. Jobs did his keynote using wifi no data plan.
I HIGHLY doubt that the Iphone will be available for the 500/600 dollar price point for pay as you go or hybrid plans. It would mean that people like myself, Cingular customers who are eligible to upgrade and get the same price as someone signing up for a new plan would be able to pick up an Iphone without burning up our upgrade, thereby letting us snag up another free phone from cingular.
This is typical of telcos and cable both, they offer all their services all the way through their multipage forms, only to inform you at the last moment (after you have given them oodles of info usually) that Product X is not available for use with Service Y.
Yes, logic dictates they not lead you down that path. They usually do however. I would not put any weight into the iPhone being available for prepaid customers, just because someone took a webshot, of some convoluted marketing web database access.
Do you know where i can get the at&t button for my website?
greetings
Oh Ron, Ron, Ron,
Your ignorance shouldn’t astound me, but it does.
As an owner of 100 shares of AAPL I would love the pay as you go plan on the iPhone. I am one of those ‘losers’ who use Trakfone pay as you go. I’m paying $7.00 a month now because, like Peter, I make 5 to 10 calls a month on my cell and rely on e-mail and landline. My minutes keep piling up. Over 200 now. I’ve been making frivolous calls on it just to use up minutes.
Open your mind Peter. There are all kinds of people, who use their cell’s in all kinds of ways. When the iPhone drops to under $300… I think I’ll pick one up. I’ve been wanting a portable MP4 player.
I doubt the pay as you go plan will be offered initially. These companies are smart enough to sucker folks like Ron into buying a contract, then after a while, offer prepaid for those more savvy.
Ron, If you feel must support the providers contract system, just keep on throwing your money away as you please.
Kudos Bill for knowing a good thing when you see it.
Is anyone else bothered by the fact that the iphone will be exclusivly offered through ATT/Cingular for the first five years?? The same company who consistantly receives some of the worst consumer scores for coverage?
Thanks for picking a winner Apple! Who cares if the phone will work when you want it to, we already have your $600 and service charges for two years
They can’t make the phone unlockable. They can make it hard but it will be:
1. Impossible to sell in Europe where everyone unlocks phones
2. Possibly illegal in the U.S. since it goes against anti-trust law and number portability and the DCMA exception for unlocking phones. A case could possibly be made.
3. Even if they have a lock for Cingular/ATT, unless they intend to put a new firmware on the phone to allow T-Mobile branding, they will have to put it in software. The phone runs OS X.ie Unix. If it can be attached to a PC, it will be hacked.
I think the iPhone will be unlockable to some extent. After all, they plan to make it available in Europe which requires some degree of GSM interoperability.
A lot of features won’t work, but that won’t stop many of us from trying. A friend bought a Nokia N95 in France and it works fine with Cingular here in the US. It has some features disabled. I would expect the same kind of issues with the iPhone.
ATT and Apple have stated that the iPhone will not be unlockable. Im sure its a matter of time before someone really hacks it but this is probably going to be one of those techniques that only the fearless hardware hackers who arent afraid to burn through 600 bucks will attempt.
The reason some people want an unlocked, unencumbered phone is to use it in ‘foreign’ countries, where one can with the use of a local simcard, and a local prepaied calling card, avoid the incredibly excessive ‘international roaming’ fees that are charged for US based travelers.
Of course, if all the wider you travel is from your home, Starbucks, and silly comic valley work place… sure, who needs any such features.
You only need one person willing to spend $600. Every time a new Mac is released, someone disassembles it completely, voiding the warranty and probably destroying it in the process, just to post pictures on the web first.
Remember, Apple actually has less control of the hardware than it did in the 1980’s. Look at how easily the iPod and AppleTV are hacked, not to mention that Intel Macs are 99% the same as their white-box brethren.
It’s not going to be unlockable (to any reasonable extent) because it’s not going to have some of the major functionality on other networks that it will wiht AT&T; ala visual voicemail.
Two points:
1) To those who doubt the iPhone will be unlockable: You’re nuts! I’m a frequent business traveler. I have 3 active foreign SIMs because it’s FAR less expensive than the alternative (eg: usurious int’l roaming rates). Carriers MUST provide individual unlock codes for that exact reason. Phone/network special functionality have *nothing* to do with this. Using the iPhone on TMO, for example, does not cause one to loose “major” functionality.
2) Prepay vs. contract plans and the iPhone: No way in Hades the PP price will be the same as the contract price. The industry average for contract buy-down is about $150. Also, for those who question the wisdom of contract plans: Do the math! The best deal you can get is 10 cents/minute with TMO and a couple other carriers. True, if you use your phone withthe regularity of my retired, depression baby mother, PP *might* be the way to go. For the vast majority, you’ll be spending more $$$ than you should. If you’re all hung-up about being on a contract, then pay full price for your handset and go on a monthly plan without a contract – all carriers have this option, you might just have to look for it.
No disrespect to you personally, but I feel that your comment is rather narrow minded. From a business perspective, this would be a great way to market the iPhone. No, this does not cheapen it! This decision would simply make it available to both types of people; those who don’t mind being locked into a two year contract and those who do not want to or are not able to. This would, of course, mean more sales for Cingular and Apple. Think about it. What’s the sense in throwing away money on a monthly contract when a person may not even use their phone that much for talking? Besides, isn’t the iPhone more than just a cell phone? Isn’t it a multimedia device as well? Therefore, cingular’s decision in this matter would open the doors for more people to enjoy this new technology, and thus everyone would benefit, not just a select few.
Carriers do not have to unlock a phone. Verizon for example offers little international support (only a handful of phones) and does not unlock there other phones simply based on the difference of technology. if you get an iPhone-cingular/att will expect you to figure out your own international needs the same way as it does now or you will use att rates for roaming (ouch). unlocking policies in any company are strict- and these are for basic phones. the iPhone will be no different, just alot harder to get unlocked if its even possible.
GSM Carriers will unlock any of their phones. Verizon is special. So is Sprint/Nextel. Very few carriers use CDMA technology (Verizon) or TDMA/iDen (Sprint) so what’s the point in unlocking a their phones? GSM is the world-wide standard with the exception of a few places like Japan -NTT/DoCoMo has a virtual monopoly, some Chinese carriers & the U.S. Cingular/ATT Policy requires that you have the new phone for a month (that way you don’t return an unlocked phone). They will unlock any phone. I always use blackberries and they have always unlocked mine. T-Mobile requires that your account be in good standing and you have to have had the new phone for at least 2 weeks. They also unlock any phones on request. The carriers understand that most people don’t want to pay $2.99 cents per minute to roam abroad. I went to India a couple of years ago and just using my blackberry data plan (no phone calls), my T-Mobile bill was over $400 for data alone. Now both Cingular & T-Mobile have unlimited worldwide blackberry data roaming plans in the hopes people will keep their phones on and recieve calls as well. at $79.99 for the Cingular plan, it ain’t cheap but its a bargain compared to a surprise $400 bill.
It would be worthless to unlock a CDMA device for int’l travel reasons unless your destination is So. Korea, the only other major CDMA market. GSM is the global standard, Qualcomm lost that battle years ago.
BTW, it’s not strict. It’s a matter of calling customer care and requesting an unlock code because of int’l travel. Cing, er, AT&T does it, so does TMO. They send it via e-mail, slam dunk.
Luke, agree with everything except one bit: Sprint is CDMA like Verizon. The old AT&T was TDMA.
Luke, how are you so sure? You sound so defiant except you might be forgetting T-Mobile under no circumstances will unlock their Sidekick devices, they might have done it in the past, but as of lately no unlocking is possible for the Sidekick on T-Mobile USA. Why? Because T-Mobile is the exclusive carrier on the Sidekick device in the US, and they have full control over what devices to allow being unlocked. That’s a Sidekick, a regular device. What makes you think that the potentially hundreds of millions invested between AT&T and Apple would go to waste because the device was unlockable? Think about the logic of that. AT&T is the exclusive iPhone carrier in the United States for 5 years. Their exclusivity agreement wouldn’t mean anything if you could buy the iPhone for $599, pay $30 and get it unlocked to use on any GSM carrier. In addition, Apple has territorial licensing agreements per country and these will also likely follow the unlock policy mentioned above. Last point, I promise. So much is riding on the unlock factor right now, let us say for the moment that AT&T won’t offer an unlock code — fine. Just buy one right? Someone would have figured out how to unlock the device, right? I think the answer to that is wrong. Apple from a manufacturer standpoint has probably implemented numerous security measures to prevent the unlocking of the device. Again, nothing is confirmed, but with the biggest cell phone launch in history riding on one carrier within the United States for half a decade, ask yourself if you would make it possible for the iPhone to be unlocked.
There’s one flaw in your logic: the 5-year lock-up benefits Cing, I mean, AT&T, not Apple. All Apple is doing is limiting potential sales if they somehow made the iPhone impossible to unlock. I think both sides will have to agree to disagree until (I predict) about 2 months after rollout.
As for the Sidekick example, look here:
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?ht=1&from=R4&satitle=unlocked+sidekick+3&sacat=15032%26catref%3DC6
These arguments between those who want the iPhone unlocked vs those who want it locked sounds a lot like those who favor DRM vs. those who don’t, or those who want to run OSX on a PC vs. those who don’t.
The future belongs to those who want greater freedom, and we all hope Apple is on their side, whether it’s in music, computers, or communications. The economics will take care of themselves.
I’m from London, and as soon as the iPhone becomes available I’ll get one off eBay and shipped across…
I really don’t care for the ‘amazing’ visual voicemail, as I hate voicemail anyhow, so for me it will be a great iPod and phone in one…
PLUS, I can pretty much bet that within a month, I’ll take it to my local market stall mobile phone dude from Japan and he’ll have a device to plug in the iPhone and make it unlocked in about 5 seconds… I’ll give him £5 and walk away with my iPhone on t-mobile!
I’ve seen cracks for pretty much every piece of Apple software ever, so why should the iPhone be any different… (most of these cracks surface within a fortnight of the software release)
(btw, the guy at my local market unlocks US sidekicks for all networks!! aaaahh… to live in London!)
Don’t want it to come across that I want the iPhone to be locked without hopes of unlocking, I’m just looking at it from the business side where you have the hottest wireless product of time basically, and you make your money selling the service, not so much on the actual device. From a cost analysis standpoint, locked is the way to go.
oh i totally agree with man… but im just saying… those pesky hackers can crack anything… (and they will, this time to my benefit!)