AT&T to offer iPhone to Business Accounts January 21st?

sr5878 · Jan 17, 2008

hey everybody,

i just spoke with an at&t rep and she told me definitively that iPhones would be allowed on business and corporate accounts as of January 21, 2008.

details:

- same iPhone, no 3G, no 16GB, same price
- requires eligibility (unknown qualifications to me, but supposedly regarding whether or not the company receives discounts), eligibility determined with the 'foundations account number'
- same data plan (UNLIMITED!), rumors of a 5GB cap are false.
- data plan will be more expensive -- $45 for 200txt/unlim data per month
- $25 discount per month promotion starting on the 21st (essentially a promotion to keep the $20 price of the data plan of individual users)
- $25 promotion ends after the 2yr service agreement is up
- no activation fee
- (current at&t customers) no upgrade fee

i am VERY excited... i've been waiting a long time for this. the woman i spoke to told me that her call center had just finished corporate iphone training, so this IS going to happen. i'm surprised there are no rumors about this... oh well.

yay

Drumjim85 · Jan 17, 2008

hope you're right, but rarely is an ATT Rep ever correct about future product or policies

ben5959 · Jan 17, 2008

hmmmm, sounds great, and it was only a matter of time before this happened, however, due to the society that we live in, and the common occurance of people posting incorrect information, i cannot accept this without some sort of credible evidence. If it is infact true, you are more than welcome to say "i told ya so" haha

sr5878 · Jan 17, 2008

Drumjim85 said:
hope you're right, but rarely is an ATT Rep ever correct about future product or policies

you are more than welcome to call at&t and confirm, if this news really is relevant to you. she told me that theres are 3 call centers, and that she isn't sure if all of them have completed training.

the fact that she gave me specific information regarding price and specific dates gives me absolutely no doubt that she is telling the truth. she has no reason to lie.

im not asking anyone to take my word... i just thought i'd post this to give back to the community that has helped me countless times with my mac and iphone purchasing decision.

Drumjim85 · Jan 17, 2008

sr5878 said:
you are more than welcome to call at&t and confirm, if this news really is relevant to you. she told me that theres are 3 call centers, and that she isn't sure if all of them have completed training.

the fact that she gave me specific information regarding price and specific dates gives me absolutely no doubt that she is telling the truth. she has no reason to lie.

im not asking anyone to take my word... i just thought i'd post this to give back to the community that has helped me countless times with my mac and iphone purchasing decision.

No, this information doesn't affect me at all... I've had the phone for awhile now ...

And I'm not saying you're lying or she's lying ... but ATT reps have told us stuff before that has been completely false... whether its on purpose or not ...

sr5878 · Jan 17, 2008

Drumjim85 said:
No, this information doesn't affect me at all... I've had the phone for awhile now ...

And I'm not saying you're lying or she's lying ... but ATT reps have told us stuff before that has been completely false... whether its on purpose or not ...

oh, i completely understand... i've called maybe 8 times in the past two days trying to get a straight answer. some people have no idea, and two refused to give me any information. one guy i talked to said he couldnt give me an exact date, but "very very very soon". i plan to call again today and tomorrow to see if her story stands up.

again, she gave me incredibly specific information regarding this change, and how it would affect my business account. i think it would be incredibly hard to be that misinformed. we shall see.

MacRumors · Jan 17, 2008

AT&T to offer iPhone to Business Accounts January 21st?

Electronista cites an anonymous source saying that AT&T will begin offering the iPhone to business accounts on January 21st. Among the details includes the continuity of corporate discounts and the requirement of having a data plan at or above $25/month. There will also reportedly be no equipment discounts, and users will be required to pre-activate via iTunes.

Just yesterday there was news that IBM is introducing iPhone compatibility for Lotus Notes users, which IBM counts as approximately 135 million.

Article Link

sr5878 · Jan 17, 2008

just called again and this seems to be confirmed.

sooooo happy right now

emccus01 · Jan 17, 2008

I'm confused as to what the pricing will be. If the data os 45$ then how much is the plan $5.00? Can someone fill me into how the pricing will work?

Plus, it won't make much sense for me, even though my company has the full corporate discount, if it does not have better exchange support.

dacreativeguy · Jan 17, 2008

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

perhaps I am missing something but the 'deal' you describe doesn't sound like much. Aside from free activation, it looks like the fees are exactly the same after the data overcharge and discount. Why do you think these terms are so special?

I signed up for service under my corporate discount which is 15 or 20% off per month. This discount has been available since day one afaik.

emccus01 · Jan 17, 2008

I agree with the above post. Our company has the same discount on individual plans and family plans. If I want the phone it would just be the added 20 for data. Paying 45 or even 25 without any added benefits is pointless. I really want the phone to be discounted.

This makes very little sense.

sr5878 · Jan 17, 2008

according to the rep the $25 discount is only for a very short time... after the promotion is over data will be $45.

i dont know the deal with corporate accounts. all i know is that right now i would be unable to activate an iphone under my father's small business account. on monday, i will.

i didnt make up the terms i'm just reporting what i've heard

i called the 800 number to find this out... if you really want verification, call them!

Grimace · Jan 17, 2008

doesn't make much sense.

Everyone els = XYZ Minutes ($59, etc.) + $20 unlimited data.

But now you'll have to have $25 or more in data? What is 125% of "unlimited"?

sr5878 · Jan 17, 2008

Grimace said:
doesn't make much sense.

Everyone els = XYZ Minutes ($59, etc.) + $20 unlimited data.

But now you'll have to have $25 or more in data? What is 125% of "unlimited"?

im sure apple is doing it to circumvent enterprise discounts. it's all about the money, remember?

lakhoon · Jan 17, 2008

Confirmed and if you are on a Family Plan - READ! ^^

I called a couple of local AT&T stores and the corporate AT&T reps. I heard the same thing as well. Discounts for corporate/business accounts only, no individual accounts.

I am an existing AT&T member and here is a way I continued my discounts since I have a family plan. I'm sure it will work for new customers who sign up on the family plan.

My phone number was the primary line and my wife was the secondary line ($9.99 for adding an additional line). I changed my phone number as the secondary line and moved my wife's number as the primary. That way, the discounts are taken off the primary number. Basically, the only thing I pay is the $9.99 +$20 data package with taxes. A way to continue the existing discounts.

bbkj1211 · Jan 17, 2008

The business I work for has an AT&T account and we have been bugging them about iPhone's release for business accounts since it was released. Finally, with news of the supposed release next week, our CEO went into the store and talked to our business account manager. He told me that the manager showed him a memo stating that iPhone's business plan included a Summer roll-out. Not only this, but that the business account must have more than 100 phones enrolled.

This leads me to believe that Apple is waiting for a 3G iPhone release before making it an option for business/corporate accounts.

I hope this is not true, but this came straight from our AT&T store yesterday afternoon.

sr5878 · Jan 18, 2008

bbkj1211 said:
Not only this, but that the business account must have more than 100 phones enrolled.

i believe your instore rep is misinformed. i just called right now and the customer service rep told me that activating an iphone would be 'no problem at all' on my account (which is an additional line on a business plan with only 4 lines total).

aricher · Jan 18, 2008

apple better have full exchange integration if they want this to fly. My IT dept still won't let their servers play with iPhone.

emccus01 · Jan 18, 2008

aricher said:
apple better have full exchange integration if they want this to fly. My IT dept still won't let their servers play with iPhone.

Same here. They need to do this right if they are to compete fully with blackberry. I want this to work.

rjohnstone · Jan 18, 2008

aricher said:
apple better have full exchange integration if they want this to fly. My IT dept still won't let their servers play with iPhone.

1.1.3 has Exchange listed under "Other" as a supported mail service.
You must enable IMAP support on your Exchange server.

You need IMAP enabled for Blackberry access, so I don't see why your IT guys would not enable IMAP support for iPhone access.

DiamondMac · Jan 18, 2008

aricher said:
apple better have full exchange integration if they want this to fly. My IT dept still won't let their servers play with iPhone.

Amen. This is a good step but before my business or many others go towards this they have a lot more things (such as this) that will NEED to be done

emccus01 · Jan 18, 2008

rjohnstone said:
1.1.3 has Exchange listed under "Other" as a supported mail service.
You must enable IMAP support on your Exchange server.

You need IMAP enabled for Blackberry access, so I don't see why your IT guys would not enable IMAP support for iPhone access.

Companies, such as mine which is a major financial organization, do not want to enable imap on the device. They use the blackberry servers now and do so because it is very secure. They do not trust the iphone yet as it is a new device. If they enabled imap anyone could forward our mail to outside mail accounts e.g. gmail. And by no means do they want us doing that. They even blocked forwarding on ms outlook. I can't even make an automated rule to send emails to my gmail account. They are very very tight with their security.

rjohnstone · Jan 18, 2008

emccus01 said:
Companies, such as mine which is a major financial organization, do not want to enable imap on the device. They use the blackberry servers now and do so because it is very secure. They do not trust the iphone yet as it is a new device. If they enabled imap anyone could forward our mail to outside mail accounts e.g. gmail. And by no means do they want us doing that. They even blocked forwarding on ms outlook. I can't even make an automated rule to send emails to my gmail account. They are very very tight with their security.

Understandable.
And in that case, yes, I can see where it can be an issue.

aricher · Jan 18, 2008

exactly. imap is a serious security issue for my company.

michaelsviews · Jan 18, 2008

Tethering?

I still don't see anything from them on the tethering part yet? Also 3G models are do out in a few months.

Wait till some corporate / business customer tethers and gets a HUGE bill

AT&T to offer iPhone to Business Accounts January 21st?

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