AT&T To Deliver Carrier-Specific Features to iPhones

Monday, September 7, 2009

Apple Insider is reporting that AT&T and Apple may be collaborating on ways to enhance customer satisfaction. They may be planning a way to set alerts for minutes overage via push notification, preventing users from unknowingly exceeding their monthly anytime minutes. This function may appear in iPhone’s “Settings” menu after a software update arriving before the year’s end.

Apple and AT&T may be also tweaking iPhone’s voicemail features. iPhones could get a new “Voicemail Preference” in its “Settings” menu to include the ability to disable voice mail greeting.

It seems AT&T is determined to be more involved in iPhone functionality. After all, it did spent billions subsidizing the phone, expanding and upgrading its network. It even partner with Loopt, an iPhone app company, to deliver always-on location awareness.

Many users would laugh at the attempt to add overage alerts via push and voice mail customization. Those functions seem insignificant compared to the lack of 3G signals at many locations. Overage alerts really could be done without push notifications as AT&T should really be sening you free text messages if you are about to go over your minutes. Don’t they do that when you are late on your bills? Voice mail customizations can also be fixed by simply calling 611. In short, these are services no one would care.

What is significant though, is AT&T making a difference in iPhone’s software. If AT&T really wants to impress us, it would start to offer more free, and useful services. Afterall, what would happen if AT&T happens to lose its exclusivity in 2010?