Good news for iPhone fans as service plans finally revealed
By John Pospisil
AT&T and Apple have at long last revealed the service plans for iPhone; well, they couldn’t have delayed much longer, with the iPhone due to go on sale at 6pm this Friday. The good news is that plans are straightforward and good value, which will come as a big relief to iPhone fans.
iPhone users will pay just US$20 for unlimited data (email and web), Visual Voicemail (a new feature) and 200 SMS Text Messages, on top of AT&T’s regular voice plans, which are based around a preset number of “voice” minutes.
To illustrate, the standard AT&T voice plan for 450 minutes costs $39.99; the equivalent iPhone plan costs $59.99 per month, and that includes the 450 minutes of talk time and the unlimited data package.
“We want to make choosing a service plan simple and easy, so every plan includes unlimited data with direct Internet access, along with Visual Voicemail and a host of other goodies,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.
“We think [our] plans give customers the flexibility to experience all of iPhone’s revolutionary features at affordable and competitive prices.”
Visual Voicemail is a new feature that allows consumers to see a listing of their voice mails, decide which messages to listen to, then go directly to those messages without listening to previous messages. All iPhone service plans also offer roll-over minutes and unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling.
The pricing for individual service plans is as follows: $59.99 for 450 minutes, $79.99 for 900 minutes, and $99.99 for 1,350 minutes.
The pricing for family service plans is as follows: $80.00 for 700 minutes, $100.00 for 1,400 minutes, and $120.00 for 2,100 minutes.
If you’re already an AT&T customer, you can simply add an unlimited data and Visual Voicemail plan to your existing contract, which will cost $20.00 (200 SMS text messages), $30.00 (1,500 SMS text messages) or $40.00 (unlimited SMS text messages).
iPhone will be available in a 4GB model for US$499 and an 8GB model for $599, and will work with either a Mac or PC. It will be available from AT&T and Apple retail stores, as well as from Apple’s online store.
By the way, if you’re planning to buy an iPhone to use solely as an iPod, you’re out of luck. In order to actually activate your iPhone, which you’ll need to do it through iTunes, you’ll need to select a service plan.
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