Today we see the launch of the Apple iPhone for the enterprise with the same hardware, but a completely new pricing scheme with incentives. One of the biggest disappointments for those with AT&T corporate plans was the lack of direct support for these plans. In the past if you wanted an iPhone to use at your company you pretty much had to sign up for a personal account with AT&T to get the device.
You will need to sign up for the same 2-year service agreement or renew your agreement. The 3 enterprise data plans include:
- 200 SMS, unlimited data, and visual voicemail for US$45
- 1500 SMS, unlimited data, and visual voicemail for US$55
- Unlimited SMS, unlimited data, and visual voicemail for US$65
You can also purchase global data add-ons if you travel to a foreign country with two options available. You can get 20MB for US$24.99/month or 50MB for US$59.99 per month which both give you data in 29 countries.
If you sign up for one of these data plans by 31 March 2008 then you get a US$25/month credit on your account. Now that is a pretty decent deal that takes the 200 SMS plan to US$20 per month.
Remember, these are just the iPhone data rate plans with no included voice minutes. You will need an eligible voice plan on your account to activate an iPhone enterprise data plan.
It will be interesting to see how the iPhone does in the corporate world and I am hopeful that this adoption may drive Apple to release some kind of Exchange sync support, which would really push the iPhone back into my hand as a primary device.
