Just left Cingular

I talked to my Cingular sales rep today (I've got about 25 phones on a Corporate plan). And he stated that the iPhone was going to be made available to corporate accounts some time during the first quarter of 2008, is there any truth to this that anyone has heard? I can't find anything else about it on the net.

Jason

TO be honest if you cingular sale rep is good at what he does he would have made it happen. My family corporation has 26 iphones set up. They just have to jump through some hoops and classify different. I dont know your circumstaces, so it may not be possible for you, but all ours did was create 6 family share planes (5 lines each) and what he called classified them appropriately so that the bills can be expensed.

Family plan is an option just not one for me, leaves to many things open for an end user to screw up. Too much trouble with the way I have to manage phones for all the incoming and leaving sales guys. I just want whoever it is to do what it takes and make the phone available without having to dance with the devil to get it done.

Jason

Understood. I agree with hope it happens soon for you. GOod Luck.

Thanks, I'll let everyone know if I can get any other info. I'm on hold with Cingular now. I bought an iPhone the day they came out for my wife and I can't stand not being able to easily put one on my business account.

Jason

ud think cingular would make this easy hu? NOT

im sure its doable, they just arent "set up" for it yet (meaning they dont have the stuff in place it would take to make reps (that dont know what they are doing) do it with two clicks)

lets face it, if its not easy, most reps would have trouble. My guy is good, chances are, all his coworkers are not so

In the UK you can just need to tlk to a rep that knows what they're doing. I've seen on the US business site that they sell them to business users shame the USA is not like the UK in Mobile terms. I'm sure if you find a smart rep they will do it for you.

Apparently the issue is not getting the phone to work, it's getting the billing to be right. The unlimited internet plans available for the iPhone aren't available to the corporate user plans. They can't just change the classification of one phone on the plan they would have to do it across the entire plan which would cost them money. It's not a matter of can't, it's a matter of won't. I'll just keep working on it.

Jason

there is a matter of corporate network security and the iphone. The iphone is not very secure when it comes to access corporate networks and corporate email, well not like the Blackberry and other devices.

edit: I stand corrected, its more of a compatibility issue with than anything else, apple needs to license MS products to work on the iphone for this to work in the corporate world.


http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6221943.html

jab119 said:

there is a matter of corporate network security and the iphone. The iphone is not very secure when it comes to access corporate networks and corporate email, well not like the Blackberry and other devices.

Click to expand...

i was gonna say, i think the camera is probably the biggest security threat on the phone. Most big companies, dont want em on their lot from what ive heard. too many things to take pictures of.

could you elaborate a little more on what you mean by corporate email and networks? the only problem i have seen in my experience is the fact that the iphone cannot enter any sort of USERNAME to connect to a corp wifi.

kgeier82 said:

i was gonna say, i think the camera is probably the biggest security threat on the phone. Most big companies, dont want em on their lot from what ive heard. too many things to take pictures of.

could you elaborate a little more on what you mean by corporate email and networks? the only problem i have seen in my experience is the fact that the iphone cannot enter any sort of USERNAME to connect to a corp wifi.

Click to expand...

The story I linked to is gone. but here it is again
http://www.reuters.com/article/tech...071206?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=10003


this excerpt is from page 2 of the article.
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The iPhone's e-mail service can be configured to work with corporate systems, but it does not "push" the entire message to the device. Contacts and calendars also cannot be updated over the airwaves, but require the iPhone to be physically docked with a computer.

Since many businesses use Microsoft Corp's Outlook software for e-mail, contacts and scheduling, Apple would need to license Microsoft technology that lets mobile phones work with Exchange, the server software that underpins Outlook.
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The only thing AT&T would need to do is get the billing system set up to allow the iphone on a corporate account. By the way this process takes a long time to set up and make it work properly from a billing perspective.

AT&T employees cant even use the iphone with their corporate email