iPhone News Updated

AT&T: No 3G iPhone prices set yet

AT&T: No 3G iPhone prices set yet

AT&T, Apple’s sole iPhone partner in the U.S., hasn’t set a price yet for the next iPhone, the company’s chief financial officer told reporters Thursday at a Reuters-sponsored technology summit.

AT&T, Apple’s sole iPhone partner in the U.S., hasn’t set a price yet for the next iPhone, the company’s chief financial officer told reporters Thursday at a Reuters-sponsored technology summit.

“There’s not been a product announcement. There hasn’t been any pricing decisions made. That’s yet to come,” AT&T Inc.’s Rick Lindner said Thursday at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit, according to the wire service.

AT&T’s iPhone pricing has been a topic of speculation for more than a month. In late April, Fortune cited a source claiming the telecommunications company would either subsidize the price of new iPhone models or offer rebates to drive the out-of-pocket expense down to US$199.

Apple Inc. and AT&T now sell the iPhone for $399 and $499, depending on the amount of storage space.

Lindner did not mention a specific date when AT&T would begin selling iPhones capable of accessing the carrier’s faster 3G data network. Most analysts, however, expect that Apple CEO Steve Jobs will introduce new models on the morning of June 9, when he takes the stage to open his company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

In other iPhone-related news from AT&T, the carrier announced earlier this week that it would wrap up its 3G network upgrade by the end of next month. Six remaining markets will be fitted with High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) technology by the end of June, AT&T said Wednesday. The move is aimed at boosting upstream data speeds to between 500Kbit/sec. and 800Kbit/sec.

AT&T’s 3G network — which has been deployed so far to more than 275 markets in the U.S. — currently boasts downstream data speeds of up to 1.4Mbit/sec.

“By fully deploying HSUPA across our 3G footprint, we not only meet the current needs of our customers, but also lay the path for our continued evolution to even faster wireless broadband capabilities,” said Kris Rinne, a senior vice president in AT&T’s wireless operations group, in a statement.

Earlier in the year, AT&T committed to adding another 80 markets to its 3G coverage in the U.S. The expansion, which the company said it would finish by the end of the year, would increase its 3G market tally to nearly 350.

[Source: http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=17B13CDA-17A4-0F78-314EBE86DFD723B3]