To find out that the Apple iPhone (
heard of it?) would roll out locked to Cingular on a multi-year exclusivity agreement was difficult enough for some folks to swallow. Imagine, then, the pain and suffering that'll be experienced by those in areas that Cingular has forsaken. Case in point: the Burlington Free Press has noted that Cingular offers not a sliver of coverage in the quaint state of Vermont, leaving well over half a million good citizens (Ben and Jerry included, we reckon) without their fix. While our initial instinct might be to buy the phone elsewhere and just roam 'til the cows come home (literally -- this is Vermont, after all), Cingular policy states that a customer's address must lie in a directly covered area -- and even for the few that manage to skate by that one, the carrier's known for canceling accounts that roam excessively. Of course, Cingular points out that eager buyers are more than welcome to buy it contract-free without activating an account, but there's not a lot of fun in that; meanwhile, Apple's staying mum on the subject, perhaps for fear of further agitating hundreds of thousands of irate Vermonters. And the problem is by no means limited to Vermont: residents of large parts of Maine, Virginia, West Virginia, New Mexico, the Dakotas, Arizona, Montana, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, and Colorado (among other states) might find that Apple has passed them over come June, unless Cingular goes into turbo mode lighting up new service areas. Anyone out there willing to move for a cellphone?
[Thanks, Craig]
