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AT&T iPhone 3G Pricing Revealed
by Peter Ha on July 1, 2008

AT&T retail stores will be open at 8AM local time on July 11th, so be “iReady!” Existing customers who don’t qualify for an upgrade will have to shell out $399 and $499 for the corresponding iP3G model. Customers who don’t want to extend their current contract will pay $599 for the 8GB and $699 for the 16GB model. Current AT&T customers who want to upgrade to the iPhone 3G from whatever else they have will have to pay an $18 activation fee while new AT&T customers will pay $36. Voice and unlimited data plans (e-mail and Web) range from $69.99 to $129.99. $199 my foot. Maybe we should all move to Hong Kong.

Full release on CrunchGear

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  • Being a current owner of a Gen1 iPhone and using it on a GoPhone (Credit not the issue, simply don’t want to be locked into a contract), I was truly excited about the new 3G iPhone. Slowly the excitement disappeared with all of these lovely hidden fees and now I’ll be waiting for a Android phone…

    I love you Apple, but this time, you’ve allowed AT&T to take it to far.

  • I can’t wait iphone 3G!

  • I would gladly pay THREE TIMES the amount being charged by Apple for the iPhone. Indeed, I would gladly sell my house, my wife and even one of my kids just to own one. There is nothing - nothing - more important than owning an iPhone. Without one, I know my life would be utterly incomplete and not worth living.

  • a July 11 can’t wait, I will be one of the first with iPhone 3G.

  • I heard it will only cost you $199 if you sign an organ donor card and name your first born Steve, Apple, or put an “i” in front of their name.

  • I am sure they’ll rip us double up here in Canada. But hey, they’ve made us wait till now so we better follow through and buy whatever ueberplan they offer or we won’t be granted access to THE PHONE for another 55 years. I guess I better start saving. Poor starbucks.

  • Hey Peter Ha.. are you Korean? Just curious.

  • WTF!!!! I thought the phone was $199 … what the hell happened?!?!

  • @#8

    It is $199, but pricing for non-commitment is the real story here.

  • Im going to have to pay $75 bucks a month(before fees) to get less than what I have with my $30 sprint sero plan :(
    I really wish the HTC diamond/pro weren’t huge disappointments

  • So existing AT&T customers get completely screwed here… They could convert a ton of AT&T BlackBerry users with this iPhone release, but pricing it that high for us will keep a lot of people from making the switch.

  • Peter,

    It was mentioned that it was $199 for a 2 year contract so I guess Apple didn’t go back from its words

  • Seems like rip-off pricing. Was thinking about moving to AT&T from T-Mobile when the iPhone 3G was released, but it seems like it makes more sense to wait and see what happens with Android which looks promising (though doesn’t have the same wow factor as the iPhone).

  • @Suraj,

    I think Steve Jobs said something like.. pricing will never be more than $199…. he NEVER mentioned the contract (or) the ATT part of the deal.. in the keynote… clever marketing huh!

  • Get the Samsung Instinct, Sprint’s “iPhone-killer” for $139, and a $69.99/month unlimited data plan. AT&T sucks.

  • You people don’t care. You will buy it at any price.

  • Great marketing, indeed but it would have been nice if they were a little more transparent. I have been thinking about switching my service over to AT&T just for this reason, but seeing the stipulations for existing customers to get the $199 price, I think I’ll hold off. I don’t want to be one of those customers down the road that is excluded from the “perks”(I will use that word lightly).

  • @ Nicholas et al - Seriously…ya’ll need to shut your pieholes and stop your bitching about AT&T. Complaining about their quality of service, their network, their constantly changing name… those are all legitimate areas of criticism. But, blaming them for subsidizing the $700 3G iPhone down to $199 in return for a 2 year contract is ridiculous. In case you’ve forgotten, you pay a LARGE premium for the joy of owning any Apple product. AT&T chooses to make it possible for the masses to own one of the coolest gadgets ever created in return for a 2 year contract (the same model the industy has been using for years) - and you want to vilify them for it? I hate to apologize for AT&T, because they are neither saints nor even a great carrier, but you’re being ridiculous! You remind me of a group of kids I saw protesting outside a Starbucks a couple years ago. Their gripe? Starbucks charges more for Organic milk and Soy milk than it does for regular milk….idiots.
    Some things simply COST more than others. Get over it.

  • This is lewd, lascivious, salacious, outrageous.

    Harry “go Jackie go” Wang

  • Any word on business plans?

  • I would think that considering all the press Apple gets regarding the iPhone that someone at Google or a manufacturer planning to use Android would try to push some news out and keep people from locking into a contract for an iPhone 3G. Apple’s done it twice within a little more than a year (announcing the phone with a long period before it actually becomes available) and no other company seems to care to get some of that attention.

  • An ipod Touch 16GB still costs $399. Why is it so ridiculous to have to pay extra for phone, gps, bluetooth, and 3g data capabilities? US carriers have been subsidizing phone prices since the beginning of the US cell market. Where is the shock coming from? Did people really believe that u could just walk into a store and buy an iphone for $199 with no strings attached?

  • Hmm. While I’d love to have a 3G phone to make up for some of the horrible data speeds when surfing the web on the iPhone (or any phone for that matter), I’ve not been all that impressed with 3G data speeds in general. Certainly not enough to pay up for the new phone. This seems to be the untold dirty secret of 3G data right now. They aren’t as reliable as the providers would have us believe (surprise).

    I just canceled my data card with AT&T because, like Verizon and Sprint’s data card service, the reliability of consistent high speed is just absent. It’s all great in a demo and on occasion it really screams along, but not consistently enough to warrant the cost–in my opinion.

  • RIP OFF - can a mobile manufacturer please develop a competitor to the iPhone that looks as sleek. It doesn’t even have to function quite as well… http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2

  • Ashutosh Kadakia - July 1st, 2008 at 9:29 am PDT

    The truly stupid thing is buying a phone without a contract. The contract cancellation fee is $175, making it cheaper to buy a phone with a contract and cancel it, pay the cancellation fee than buying a phone without contract.

  • @aquietamerican

    It needs to be said that all wireless telco’s suck. It’s not a matter of which one sucks more, it’s which one sucks less. So complaining about AT&T, Sprint etc is irrelevant. They are all a hassle to deal with and charge outrageous prices for a service people now consider common and a necessity. People just need to deal with it.

    @Dan Grossman

    Are you serious? Have you seen the Instinct? It’s closer to an iPhone 1.0 and really won’t amount to anything in the smartphone market.

  • This is sickening.

    So, basically Steve Jobs lied to us at the conference? He didn’t mention a thing about current customers but still got the big applause he wanted.

  • @Brian (No. 23): I am using a Vodafone data card for more than 2 years now in Germany and “learned” to live with the discrepancy between their advertising and 3G network speed and availability in real life…

  • @Ashutosh or anybody who knows about these things…if you were to buy the iPhone with contract and then cancel, how does that affect how it works? Presumably without the contract it would then just become an iPod touch until someone figures out how to unlock it in order to use it with another carrier?

  • apple is slowly but surly becoming just another company. I have never bought a ipod or any other little gadgets apple creates because that is the business side of Apple so they follow the same market schemes to get you to buy a product. There computers on the other hand Can only control so much on the market so they make an effort to have at least the best computers to fit your life style. all that other shit they sell is no different then what bill does.

  • Super Secret Insider News –

    AT&T has decided to lower their credit score requirements for the first several days of the iPhone 3G sales. They want to get it into the hands of EVERYBODY they can. So if credit has been an issue for you in the past it may be worth the try this time around.

  • I figured that AT&T would try to kill customers. I wish the government never allowed the merger. They promised it would lead to better customer choice and price. This makes me upset at AT&T, matter of fact, even though I only have them as my phone customer, I’m thinking about getting their 10 dollar DSL hooked up. In case you all didn’t know, AT&T is required to give you basic 10 dollar a month DSL if you are in one of the many effected states. It’s not an easy process, but now I’m almost sure I will sign up for it in addition to my road runner. I’ll just use the AT&T service to constantly seed torrents for my favorite Linux distros and for my favorite Music artists who have a sane concert taping policy.

    Listen up people, we need to start getting organized. We need to start forming consumer groups who stand up to these companies. We need to reward the companies who utilize fair pricing, and stop rewarding companies who exhibit this type of anti competitive behavior. Even though Microsoft has traditionally been the closed loop, they’ve started acting a bit better, and all I see from Apple lately is lock in, lack of choice, lack of openness, even though they do most things right. This clearly is not one of them. Is there a petition to sign? I want AT&T split up. The lack of competition in the wireless/broadband industry has reached a point in which there is no choice for the consumer. Microsoft has never done the amount of damage that these companies are trying to inflict on the consumer. I won’t be getting a 3g, and if/when I do, it will only be with T/Mobile. AT&T, I’ve been with you for almost 10 years, this makes me so upset that I want you to watch in a couple of months when I cancel my contract. This is unfair to the consumer, and the only reason you are doing it is that the iPhone is the only choice on the market for a real phone. When this changes I hope you get served a great dish of karma. I for one will remember.

  • So, when does the BlackBerry Bold come out?

  • people. stop whining. either buy the damn phone or dont. some things are a luxury. let us remember that the iphone is a lexus, so you are by default going to have to pay for it one way or another. save your money if its something you truly can’t live without. i could really care less if i get one or not. when it all comes down to it - its a phone to make phone calls….jeezus kryst you all are a bunch of babies.

  • So wait. If I am leaving Sprint for ATT and a 3G Iphone, I still get it for $199/299, right?

  • Activation fee???? My god $2000 in 2 years is not enough!!!???

  • I’ve sold my unlocked iPhone at $500 thinking that I’ll be able to get the new iPhone 3G shipped here at $400. I’m in a country where the iPhone will not be available.

    I hate you Apple.

  • Boy, this video is really effective at beating the life out of any desire I might have had to switch to AT&T for the iPhone.

  • Once again readers have proved to be to stupidest smart people on the planet. It’s really an amazingly simple process. If you don’t like the price, don’t buy it, or wait until it goes down.

    If you can’t afford it — go get a career that pays you something and then buy it, until then, have fun with whatever you ca afford — this is a “luxury” product, you don’t NEED it, you WANT it — there’s a big difference.

    If somehow $400-600 bucks is a lot of money to you then you’ve clearly gone down the wrong path, are still living with mom and dad, or you’re into charity work. I applaud your austerity, feel free to call me on my new iPhone 3G.

    To the guy that wants to start a “consumer group” how about you use that passion to build a company, employ people and get a life — it’s a friggin’ cell phone, not national health care.

  • Just one more damned thing to buy. Damn all the cell phone companies.

  • So once again Steve has lied in his key note. He boasted of 199 for iP3G without specifying anything about the ATT contract. Since the Apple store is going to sell the iP3G @ 599/699, why did he not reveal this in his keynote at WWDC??

  • 3 months ago when my verizon contract ran out i signed up with att so that i could get an iphone. I did this because of the new 3G $199 iphone rumor that was floating around the web. I got myself the new unlimited everything plan and i have been sitting hear with my mouth watering….dealing with call quality that cant even touch that of verizon in my area (chicago) and now i see some bait and switch poppin off.

    I have no problem paying $399. My problem is that the $199 price tag convinced me to give up my blackberry so i could play with something shiney and now i find out its all a lie. Its like getting a super model home and then noticing her adams apple. <—apple get it?

    I think it may be cheaper for me to buy out the existing att contract, sign up for a new contract and get the 199 deal and this time i wont give them extra monthly juice by getting the unlimited plan.

  • What ! $36 activation fee ! What a rip off. Should ne $0 activation fee.
    So bad.

  • To me, the Iphone should cost like $60. $199 or even $700 is OVERPRICED. Apple sell expensive hardware.

  • $399 to upgrade really is not that bad.

  • WTF?!? I was under the impression that existing customers will just have to extend their contracts 2 more years to get the iPhone at $199.. I’m really pee’d off…

  • here is the price list from Hong Kong’s 3 :

    http://iphone.three.com.hk/website/en/iplan.html

  • Wait till India plans are out. here anything more than 15USD/month would be sucidal. Though phone may cost ~400USD.

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