AT&T’s exclusive contract with the iPhone (read: license to essentially print money) could end on Wednesday. Per Electronista, a purported contact within the carrier says exclusivity should end along with the January 27th date. The tipster doesn’t say who would join AT&T in supporting the iPhone, albeit Verizon has often been cited as the most likely pick, in part for the large subscriber base as well as the frequently cited network strength.
While evidence have yet to be provided, possible signs of this have shown up in the following leaked screen capture:
A contract found by web site HotHardware has cited a strategy that AT&T strategy that the company has indirectly confirmed itself. The company would “compensate” for losing sole rights to the iPhone by carrying smartphones on platforms it has previously ignored. The carrier has already said it would offer several new smartphones in the first half of the year that include five Android devices as well as Palm’s webOS phones, most likely GSM versions of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. It’s also been noted anecdotally that AT&T has lately deemphasized its exclusivity and has instead focused on attacking Verizon.
Per the contact, AT&T has been mentioned as being internally frustrated with the reputation it has garnered through its network problems and may actually be willing to end exclusivity simply to offload the more publicly hostile customers to Verizon. It’s been hinted that some of the complaints may stem from the iPhone having a less than ideal transition from 3G to GSM when 3G isn’t ideal. Nearly all of AT&T’s upgrade efforts in recent months have focused on adding either 850MHz 3G or improving 3G capacity behind the scenes.
Once again, all should be revealed at the media event on Wednesday.
3 replies on “Rumor: AT&T Exclusive iPhone Deal Could End Wednesday”
Apple forced AT&T to do all sorts of things for their exclusive, e.g. visual voicemail…. wonder what they’re forcing Verizon to do (if…….)……. how about one-mobile-number-for-multiple-devices……? That’d be a game-changer.
This story of transition from 3G to Edge and GSM is so funny!
Outside of the USA, there is a huge number of 3G and 3GS phones in service, and while the sensitivity of the iphone could be better, i have never had any issues of transition from 3G to GSM, be it in Belgium, Italy, Serbia, Russia or other countries.
This is a lame excuse from ATT, otherwise the european forums would be full of such claims.
Pierre
Suck it AT&T