"a Strand Consult study says. The analyst group maintains that "not one" provider offering the iPhone has seen a financial or market share boost since adding it to their rosters."

Surely that can't be true for AT&T. There is absolutely NO reason why anyone would use AT&T as a carrier if they didn't have an exclusive contract with Apple to sell the iPhone.

I really thought carriers were trying to get the iPhone in order to drive up subscribership and I'd heard that the carriers could get higher monthly payments from those subscribers. If they're losing money, that is the carrier's fault because they're not balancing their books properly. I'm sure the iPhone is doing far better than expected and I don't see AT&T asking out of its contract since I keep hearing they want it extended.

Well, the carrier's wouldn't be getting any money by not getting more subscribers, either.

how they wouldn't see revenue boosts from data service, since they all seem to be charging massive fees for that service. The only thing that keeps me from getting an iPhone is the huge expense of the data fees.
I understand the subsidy of the phone purchase is carried at least in part (probably large part) by the data/service fees, but that's too much. Particularly since the fee won't go down after the carrier has hit the break even point.

This report sure reads like badly applied statistics with the typical I see a correlation so it must be the cause mixed with ignoring facts that don't support their premise of the report.

Are AT&Ts expenses up??? SURE, iPhones cost money.

But its a one time expense. AT&T has reported several million new customers..... all locked in for two years..

And the dollars are already up for data plans and AT&T has reported its churn rate down again.

AT&T is doing great with the iPhone. If not, why would EVERYONE else be trying to copy it. ???

Just a thought,
en

carriers will get their pay off with the 2 year contract lock.

Why then AT

Some people continue to label data fees for the iPhone "excessive", "massive", "exorbitant". Meanwhile, they are exactly the SAME as all other major smartphones. You can't get Storm, Android, Pre without a data plan. So, how again is iPhone's data plan so expensive compared to others? Surely, we aren't comparing it to ordinary voice plans with throw-away $0 with contract phones?

You can get the storm and the bold without a data plan. At least on rogers. Rogers also has cheaper data plans for blackberry, such as a $15 unlimited email and bb messenger. They don't offer anything like that for an iphone.

Also, the iphone is an internet intensive phone. Without internet, it loses many of its advantages. Therefore, it's pretty obvious why people would want a bigger data plan on an iphone than they would on a blackberry. h***, I love blackberry, but I admit the browser stinks.

Also, a lot of the other cool iphone stuff you have to pay extra for. Like visual voicemail and mobileme. You don't pay mobileme as part of your phone bill, but its something to consider.