Prepaid iPhone available on March 26

No-Commit pricing on the iPhone starting March 26. Yes, that means you can activate it on an AT&T GoPhone account. So finally you can get an iPhone 3G without signing a new contract. Of course, that’s about the only bit of good news that comes along with this plan. From here it’s all downhill. First up is the pricing: $599 for the 8GB and $699 for the 16GB. After the jump, more downsides, and a (supposedly) good reason not to take advantage of this offer. The one big catch here is that this will not be offered to new AT&T customers. You’ll have to present an existing line in order to buy a No-Commit iPhone. AT&T is also limiting this to one per line, but admit that there’s no real way to enforce that if customers make multiple visits to multiple stores. Even so, the rest of the downsides make this even less worth it. So already you’re paying out the wazoo, plus you have to be signed up with an AT&T contract. Bummer. You know what else is a downer? According to a commenter at Boy Genius Report, it would be cheaper to buy a new iPhone 3G with a contract, use it for a month (that’s a requirement), and then spend the ~$200 to terminate your contract. If this is the case, and it appears to be so, why would anyone even think of paying the No-Commit price? There’s no specific talk about the type of data plan available to GoPhone users. The slides say that “An iPhone Data plan is require if the device is activated on the AT&T network.” That might actually be a good thing. Yes, it’s $30 per month, but it provides comprehensive data services. The other data offerings from GoPhone charge per kilobyte, which just isn’t going to satisfy the average iPhone user. Remember back in the day when it cost $20? I’m not quite sure how well these will sell, given the circumstances: the economy, the high price of the device, the price of the data plan, etc. I suppose AT&T thought it worth the experiment, but as it stands it’s clearly better to just sign a contract if you want an iPhone. ]]>