AT&T Pushing Apple for Longer IPhone Exclusive

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that AT&T is in negotiations to extend their exclusivity agreement with Apple and their iPhone. According to their sources, the current deal is set to expire in 2010. AT&T is looking for another year.

By Seth Weintraub
Wed, April 15, 2009

Computerworld — The Wall Street Journal is reporting that AT&T is in negotiations to extend their exclusivity agreement with Apple and their iPhone. According to their sources, the current deal is set to expire in 2010. AT&T is looking for another year.

Apple and AT&T, of course, did not comment specifically on the matter. CEO Randall Stephenson would only say that Apple and AT&T had a multi-year deal. An Apple spokesman declined to comment saying the very illuminating "we have a great relationship with AT&T".

The Wall Street Journal did take out some significant numbers, however. AT&T had added 4.3 million iPhone subscribers in the second half of 2008 about 40% of those were new to AT&T. That comes to 1.72 million new subscribers that might not have come to AT&T had it not been been for the iPhone.

Even if AT&T is unable to secure exclusivity in 2011, it still has the right to the iPhone for another year in the US. That means the iPhone 3.0, which will probably be launched in June, will be exclusive to AT&T. Some had hopes that T-Mobile or other US carriers would also offer the iPhone. Recently, buy.com started selling open iPhones that work on T-Mobile and other GSM carriers in the US and abroad.

I have to wonder if this is the best move for Apple, and more importantly, its customers. Being exclusive to one carrier eliminates a large segment of the population who may want to be iPhone customers. There are a huge swaths of land that AT&T doesn't cover and Verizon, for instance, covers exclusively. In fact, I am soon going to be moving to a place that can barely pick up an AT&T signal. I am also not even one year into my two-year agreement. What is someone in my situation to do?

Here's what I'd like to do: I'd like to get a Cradlepoint mobile 3G to WiFi bridge. Then I could choose the carrier with the best service in my area. I could then use my iPhone or iPod touch to connect to the WiFi of the Cradlepoint at all times. I could then use Skype to send and receive calls. If AT&T decided to cover my area later and came in with a better price I would switch to them. Or, better yet, Sprint's Clear 4G WiMAX towers could be built in my area and I could go to them.

As I've stated before, I think this is the future of mobile communications. That's why I think the telcos are going out of their way to sign people up for large two-year voice contracts.

On that note, Wednesday Apple updated its iPhone 3.0 beta software so that you cannot make calls on Skype over AT&T's wireless network. It isn't hard to see that voice over IP scares the daylights out of the telcos.

You are here: Technology Topics » Advice & Opinion

Most Recent Technology Topics Stories

White Papers »

HP NonStop SQL Fundamentals whitepaper

This whitepaper offers a detailed look into the fundamentals of HP NonStop SQL solutions. See how this system delivers unprecedented levels of application availability with fail-safe data integrity and meets the needs of enterprises with large-scale business critical applications.

Has Your Server Infrastructure Kept Pace with End User Demands?

Learn how your answer to this question compares to your peers by taking this quick poll. See how your peers are dealing with the challenge of ensuring a highly capable server infrastructure as technological shifts impact the application server platform.

Enterprise Strategy Group: The Case for a New Data-centric DLP White Paper

With increasing data growth, comes increased need for data security. The existing DLP model, with a focus on compliance/enforcement is not sufficient as the data discovery and classification capabilities are not granular enough. Read this paper to find how you can efficiently and accurately manage your risk by rapidly inventorying and classifying your data and then developing remediation workflows that support business needs.

Data Loss by the Numbers

This paper breaks down attack sources into four categories: external, malicious insiders, accidental insiders, and unknown.

Data Loss Prevention Solution for Managing E-Discovery

The rapid growth of data and technology is creating challenges for organizations as this digital data is considered to be business communications and must be preserved according the same industry-specific regulations governing the retention and discovery of emails and more traditional forms of electronic communications. This paper examines the role that Data Loss Prevention ("DLP") technology can play in helping organizations address the challenges of locating information in response to electronic discovery.

Best Practices in Data Protection - Executive Summary

This research, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, focuses on issues relating to the use of data protection solutions such as endpoint encryption and data loss prevention within the workplace.

Webcasts »

Virtualization Success is a Team Effort

As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.

Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware

Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.

Quantifying the Business Value of VMware View - Webcast

Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business

Deliver Private Cloud Database as a Service with VMware vFabric Data Director

VMware recently announced VMware vFabric™ Data Director, a new database deployment and operations platform that enables enterprise IT organizations to offer database as a private cloud service. Built on top of VMware vSphere 5, vFabric Data Director enables IT organizations to ontrol database sprawl through automation and consistent policy enforcement and accelerate application development cycles with self-service database management. Attend this webcast to learn how vFabric Data Director can help you build database-as-a-service in your datacenter.

Reliable Disaster Protection with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

A simple, cost-effective disaster-recovery solution for virtual environments is high on the agenda for IT organizations as they virtualize more business-critical applications with VMware. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager-the market-leading disaster-recovery product-ensures the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager provides centralized management of recovery plans, enables nondisruptive testing and automates site-failover processes.

Introduction to VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5

Traditional disaster recovery solutions are often too expensive, complex and unreliable to meet business requirements. As a result, IT departments are hesitant to expand disaster protection beyond their most critical applications, largely because they are uncertain whether the quality of the protection is really worth its cost. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager 5 is the market-leading disaster recovery product that addresses this situation for organizations of all kinds. It complements VMware vSphere to ensure the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications.

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter