iPhone4 and ATT

Back in June I was at a Higher Ed technology conference. (The conference was at Bethel University in MN from the 2nd through the 4th.) Apple was scheduled to officially announce the iPhone 4 a few days later, but because of the prototype leak, most of the specs had been figured out.

I admit that while I liked the form factor, the item that I most wanted was the front facing video camera. I have always been a fan of video conferencing, and believe that mobile video conferencing is able to really take off.

So on June 4th when ATT announced that they would no longer be selling an unlimited data plan, I started speculating...

ATT *said* that they were dropping the unlimited plans because 98% of their users use less than 2GB of data in a month (and 66% use less than 200MB). The marketing spin suggested than most users would be getting a better deal since their plan costs would drop.

To me, this change meant one thing: ATT wanted to limit the data on their network and charge more for overages, but why?

I think that ATT knew that the front facing video camera was going to swallow in a single gulp what little bandwidth their network had left. Anyone that's ever used iChat knows that it's easy to use and almost as easy to set up.

Fring on an iPhone did a great job with the rear facing camera, but getting the thing set up was not easy. Knocking video was fairly low quality, and only one way. So if anyone could pull it off, Apple had the history to do it right.

Which scared the unlimited plans right off ATT's rate plan.

But my speculation was that ATT's exclusivity arrangement with Apple required that ATT maintain an unlimited data plan. If that was the case, ATT would be breaching their contract, and if they were to breach the contract, then Apple would be free to bring out the phone on another carrier.

Lots of people where I work might as well have a big red "V" on their chest, but they have good reason; the ATT service in this metro is marginal, while the Verizon service is quite solid. Most of them would love to have an iPhone, but most if not all of them have been willing to do so if it meant switching to the ATT network.

But it would take some time to bring the iPhone to another carrier, even if there weren't exclusivity agreements to contend with. And if it were a CDMA iPhone, there would be the radio issues as well.

While we will not ever likely know the specific arrangements, everyone knows that the ATT/Apple exclusivity arrangement would have to end someday. If the iPhone 4 was going to be the last exclusive model on ATT, then the rollout of the iPhone 4 would have been the most critical issue, and the more iPhones that ATT could sell, the more people would be locked into the two year contract and the new data plans.

My theory is supported by ATT's decision to accelerate the eligibility existing iPhone customers that would not have otherwise been eligible at the launch of the iPhone 4. I believe that ATT made a calculated guess about when Apple might announce iPhone availability on a different carrier and tried to keep those customers in the fold by letting upgrade early if they would have been eligible in calendar year 2010.

So, all of that speculation, plus an Apple even scheduled in early September, tells me that there will be a Verizon iPhone announcement in early September, that pre-orders will be available for the Christmas shopping season, and that the iPhones will ship in early January.

Oh, and that white GSM iPhone that's been delayed for "manufacturing issues"? I fully believe that's what it started as, but that Apple decided pretty early to hold that for their new carrier.