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Apple and AT&T have adopted a close variant of AT&T's standard smartphone data plan, starting with 450 minutes, 200 SMS text messages, 5000 night/weekend minutes, rollover minutes and unlimited mobile-to-mobile for $59.99/mo.. Family plans start at $80/mo., raising minutes to 700 with unlimited night/weekend minutes.
Current AT&T customers can add iPhone service to their existing plan for $20/month; new customers essentially pay standard AT&T rates plus $20/month per iPhone.
Enthusiastic texters users can blow through iPhone's 200 SMS message quota in a hurry. AT&T offers more expensive plans for these users; upgrading to 1500 texts adds another $10, and unlimited texting is available for $20. (We speculate that iPhone's lack of internet chat is an intentional omissions designed to let AT&T sell service upgrades.)
Apple and AT&T state that all iPhone plans require a two-year service commitment. However, iPhone buyers have discovered two workarounds.
With a sufficiently poor credit record, an AT&T store can provide you with a special code to enter in iTunes activation that enables you to obtain a contract-free, month-to-month service plan at a higher price about $86/month.
If you buy from Apple, which does not perform an in-store credit check, you can enter an invalid social security number during iTunes activation to force a credit check failure. iTunes will then let you buy a pay-as-you-go "GoPhone" plan. We recommend against using a random number — if it turns out to be in use, you've committed identity theft. 999-99-9999 seems to be a truly invalid number, but we have not tested this.
Both of these methods have a higher monthly cost than the standard plans, though, so the benefit is marginal.
Customers who are currently under contract with other carriers may have to pay cancellation fees to the other carrier to terminate service early. AT&T does not offer a fee reimbursement option.