So in the end, over the two-year life of the contract, the total difference comes to $40. Or about $1.67 per month. A price hike, yes, but seems pretty reasonable for the jump from EDGE to 3G.

I'd love to have the ability to use the internet on a mobile device, but I'm already paying a lot for DSL. My question is, is there any way for my desktop G5 to tap into the 3G network via the iPhone (thus eliminating the need for DSL)?

The move to 3G is fab, but what really geeks me out about this move is that the battery life in the v2 iPhone will be much longer. That's my only bugbear in using the thing when I'm on the road; I know unless I can recharge or monitor every milliwatt, the battery will be dead in a day.

I love my iPhone and the extra cost is worth the speed and usability.

This goes back to what's been true since the very beginning. AT&T subsidizes the cost of the iPhone, just like other carriers subsidize phones exclusive to their network. AT&T pays a huge sum to Apple for the exclusivity, allowing Apple to lower the price, but AT&T gets it back on the contract.

Price isn't my main concern with the iPhone, though it is overpriced. It's AT&T and the lack of choice for a carrier. That's the sole reason I haven't bought an iPhone. I dislike AT&T's monopoly and politics (enabling the Bush Administration illegal wiretapping), and I dislike the fact that American telecoms such as AT&T have crippled innovation and eliminated consumer choice in the U.S. The concept of a free market somehow DOES NOT APPLY to the telecom and cable industries (or banks such as Bear Stearns for that matter). Sure, I could hack the iPhone, but who wants to pay $400 for a product that I have to alter myself?

While the rest of the world gets to choose the cellphone they want AND THEN choose the type of plan to go with it, we here in the good old U.S. are still dictated to and limited by the telecoms. You can use an iPhone with T-Mobile in Germany, choose between multiple carriers in Italy and even Latin America. Why can't I choose my own carrier here in the U.S.? It's like selling me a car and telling me I can only buy gas at Chevron.

But I've got a solution. Why doesn't Apple just make an offer to buy AT&T's cellphone company and run its own service?

Of course the real solution is to elect people who will protect us from these telecom/cable parasites.

Unlock the iPhone, Apple!

A little slab that you put in your pocket or purse and it transfers your money to AT&T.

Amazing!

"More money than brains" - words to live by.

Sorry, you can't, at least not in any supported way (I have no idea if there is a way to hack it) and, for multiple reasons, it is unlikely we will see this any time soon, at least without adding a special package that will probably cost as much as you dsl line.

The two main reasons are as follows. The telecoms don't want to sell you a product that can take the place of another product.

2nd, and less insidiously, the networks are offered as unlimited, and while they can deal with the level of traffic a mobile device will use, they could start to choke if internet heavy users start doing this and and start torrenting on the 3g network all day and night.

10 dollars two year from now certainly won't have the the value it does today... plus you've had two years do with that money what you will.

Not that this isn't worth pointing out... but it's hardly apples and apples

...are prickbastards. I would love an iPhone, but I will never willingly give money to AT&T.

Well, first it was because the iphone can not be unlocked, legally.

Well, now I won't be able to get an iphone for over 2 years because of the contract that I have with AT&T that prevents me from purchasing a new phone until the 2nd year of the contract.

I was truly hoping that I would be able to go and plunk my hard earned money down at the local Apple store (over 2 hours away) and add it to my current plan. Well, now I have been denied that option because I have to have a 'new' 2-year contract with AT&T to get the fantastic quoted pricing. I'm already paying over $200 per month for the gracious 'package pricing' from AT&T that includes my cell phone.

This coupled with the fact that AT&T is spending millions of dollars on lobbyists to avoid prosecution for illegally violating applicable laws by recklessly recording and distributing information from the citizens of the United States private telephone and internet communications makes me really hesitant to even want to get an iphone even if I could just go and add it to my account.

To read AT&T's press release is to read it and see the glee that the corporation is taking at finally having the tiger by the tail and not have to share the cream of the no doubt phenomenally successful iphone's effects on their bottom line. I don't want to add to that bottom line. I don't want to encourage the illegality that is the crimes of our government and the crimes of those that callously discard major component parts of the founding documents of this great country.

We are a country that is based on laws and a legal system that has respected the privacy and legal right of its citizens from being interfered with or spied upon by the government that governs this great country.

A fundamental right of the governed in this country is to be free from the continual and purposeless wholesale spying of the governing. In a time where anything that can be discovered can be used against that person by the governing, there is a huge imbalance in the treatment of the governed. I can not, in all good conscience, submit to nor support the illegality perpetrated by the Bush administration and AT&T and others.

I WILL NOT PURCHASE AN IPHONE. I WILL NOT CONTRIBUTE TO A CORPORATION THAT WILL TREAT MY PRIVACY WITH SUCH MALICE AND CARELESSNESS.