AT&T to give away 1.5 years of service to iPhone buyers?

By Darren Murph | January 25, 2007

Get your buckets of NaCl loaded up, as this one just seems a bit too rough around the edges to hold any sort of reality, but according to Zune-smashing Jim Cramer and TheStreet, AT&T will be “giving away its service for a year and a half” to anyone purchasing Apple’s forthcoming iPhone. Still in your chair? If so, we doubt those three or four fence-sitters out there pondering over whether or not switching out of that recently signed contract would be worth it come June are debating any longer. In a bizarre assertion, it seems that AT&T is going all out in order to downright steal marketshare from competitors such as Verizon and Sprint-Nextel, and while we’ve no idea if such a plan intends to be implemented, this here sounds like a surefire way to get more than a few traitors to come AT&T’s way. Of course, there has yet to be company confirmation that such a deal is in the works, and we’re still waiting for the presumably mile-long list of contract stipulations that will certainly be attached, but 18 months of gratis phone service isn’t something to balk at — but we bet you’ll still be the one ponying up for AT&T’s practically necessary (and admittedly costly) data plan if this goes down. [Warning: Read link requires subscription]