The iPhone is exclusive to AT&T for five years: [link]

I think iPhone's exclusivity to Cingular/AT&T is a rare blunder for Apple. Tying their fortunes to one cell phone company gives Verizon (as hinted to in the article), T-Mobile, Sprint and the other companies a strong incentive to help competitors like Palm, Blackberry, Samsung, Dell?, etc. come up with competing products. And I just left Cingular (and consequently AT&T for at least the fourth time) because of crappy customer service.

The iPhone is exclusive to AT&T for five years:

Feh.

I think that Jobs has a trick or two up his sleeve. I'm betting that the contract with AT&T covers existing technology like GSM and CDMA, but it doesn't cover emerging technology like WiMAX.

Or at least, that's what I'm hoping.

Supposedly the terms Apple was demanding for carriers were pretty onerous. Supposedly no European carrier would accept them.

Internal Steve Jobs keynote promising all sorts of Apple goodness in the future: [link]

Also, about the iPhone:

Steve opened up with how he believes that the iPhone will change the mobile space forever. He said that when the Mac first came out, people talked about how some day, every computer would work that way, and the same would be true of the iPhone. The iPhone was driven by the fact that everyone hates their phones, and it's all about "core competence"—making all of the features easy-to-use and self-discoverable.

Huh. We'll see.

In any event, hopefully it'll force improvements in other phones.

Supposedly the terms Apple was demanding for carriers were pretty onerous.

I read in some review that Cingular agreed because they were at the bottom of the market and that Apple wanted to change everything form the ground up.

I think iPhone's exclusivity to Cingular/AT&T is a rare blunder for Apple

I'm assuming that Apple has an escape clause or two...

There is no way I will go back to Cingulair/AT&T/whatever they're calling themselves next week for any phone. Hopefully Verizon will come up with something competitive eventually.

I haven't had major problems with Cingular (and I've had cell service with the company since 1995 - before it was Cingular!). AT&T has a much poorer rep when it comes to wireless customer service. I think it is a major blunder for Cingular to change its name to AT&T - but I'm no CEO.

That said, the cell service isn't wonderful everywhere in this country. In my own home, I have dropped calls and I sincerely believe the service has degraded in the last 8-10 months because I think call quality has gotten worse more recently.

I do think that if you get the wrong customer service person, you are kind of fucked. But googling problems has typically gotten me the answers I need so I haven't had to fuck with customer service.

I did do customer service online chat and was on there for 2-3 hours (they were answering like 20 people's questions at the same time) and they couldn't tell me why my Razr couldn't get on the internet. But when I went to a Cingular store, they told me to download Opera Mini and I was set.