iPhone on "old AT&T" Blue Plan?

[gadgetmacfreak]

When Cingular bought AT&T Wireless, existing AT&T plans were referred to as Blue Plans and Cingular were Orange. Most new phones were available for Orange plans only.

Has anyone heard anything about the iPhone working on Blue plans?

 

[Counterfit]

I think you have to switch to one of the new iPhone plans.

 

[apfhex]

You're required to sign a 2 year contract and add at least the iPhone data plan ($20) to your service. A new contract means you won't get to keep your old Blue plan, most likely.

 

[gadgetmacfreak]

I have added phones in the past -- but the Cingular rep told me I had to order them online or by them on eBay. The phones that they had in the store would not work on the Blue plans.

I had started to think about moving to an Orange plan, but then i was told that I had to replace all three phones on the account.

i suspect that since the iPhone comes with it's own SIM that I will need to change to an Orange plan -- I just don't understand techincally what the difference is. Are the voicemail systems different? Are the SIM cards different?

I would love to just pay the $20 per month on top of my Blue plan, but I've seen nothing to confirm that this is possible -- the people at AT&T can't tell you.

 

[applehappy]

I'm in the same shape and although I cannot find anything that specifically addresses this, I'm sure that we will have to switch to the newer plan system. Along with the switch has to be every phone on the plan.

 

[terrrrrible]

Pretty sure it's only going to work on the iPhone plans that were put out. You activate the phone on your own through iTunes, and those are going to be the only ones available.

 

[RedStripe]

Activation on Old AT&T Wireless Plan (Blue Plan)?

Has anyone successfully added a $20 (or more) iPhone data plan to their former AT&T Wireless Plan? These are what's called Old Blue plans, as opposed to Cingular and the new AT&T plans, which I believe are called Orange Plans.

This would only apply to anyone that started as an Old AT&T Wireless customer before they got acquired by Cingular, and has kept their plan since being acquired by Cingular and now rebranded as the New AT&T.

I actually have an old Family Plan (3 lines) and wonder if the iPhone will accept my phone number and plan during activation.

 

[BWhaler]

I have one of the old $79 unlimited minutes plans which they haven't offered in years.

They have tried forever to get me off it. I have had to buy unlocked phones, old sim cards, etc., to stay on it.

I understand why Apple had to do this deal with AT&T, and that AT&T sucks beyond words.

It just bums me out that after years of spending more money to stay free of contracts on an incredible plan, those days are over.

But I want the iPhone since my phone sucks. And I have a fantastic phone number which I couldn't replace, so this is the trade-off I have to make...

 

[habacomike]

Well, I have spent considerable time attempting to get ATT to honor their commitment. Their FAQ on the iPhone indicates that existing Cingular customers (that would include former ATT WS customers by their lack of qualification) can keep their existing voice plan, but may be required to add a data plan for $20.

I asked whether Apple would charge the restocking fee since I bought the phone on the basis (in part) that I would not need to surrender my existing plan, and the only way I found out differently was to unpack the phone and actually attempt to activate it. ATT indicated that Apple would charge the fee.

After I cooled down a bit, I called ATT back, and found that the new plan would actually be less than the old plan. So, I'm giving it a try.

That being said, I really do hope that someone files a class action lawsuit against ATT for misleading advertising.

Mike

 

[RedStripe]

So did you actually go through the process of activating a iphone to your old "Blue Plan"? What happened? Did it give you an error message when you tried to add the $20 data plan? Screen shots would be nice. Thanks.

 

[RedStripe]

Has anyone else seen discussion of this on the web other than here and here:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/apple/ip...-all-customers-eligible-for-iphone-272880.php

 

[noquarter]

Just prior to the point when the Cingular / AT&T merger was complete, all Cingular customers were notified by letter, text msg and email that we had to come in and switch out our GSM chips to the "new version". Since then, our service has gone to hell. I found out later that this was planned as part of their merger, and the real purpose of the GSM chip upgrade was to move all "Orange" network customers to the "Blue" network since the "Blue" network had broader coverage and it was cheaper to upgrade the "Blue Network" than it was to expand the "Orange" network. The problem is that they never kept up with the upgrades and the quality of service, both voice and data, has been getting worse daily ever since.