So you want an iPhone, do ya?

I'm an existing ATT wireless drone, so I was pretty excited about the exclusive iPhone deal, but I'm tiring of all cost associated with simply having a cellular phone. I currently have a mere $40 a month plan, but want 7pm off peak minutes, so I pay an extra $9 – up from $7, a nice 30% increase from what I originally signed up for, and all my text messages are now $0.15 instead of $0.10, a whopping 50% increase. It may not seem like much until you consider that such percentage increases in price would hardly be tolerated on anything else except for gas (and even that's finally motivating people to drive Priuses).

As an existing customer, I have the option of getting the phone but I'll have to tack on a $20 data option to my plan. That would increase my base plan cost by, yup 50%. And regardless if you're an existing customer or not, they still stick you with a $36 activation fee for the privilege of taking the iPhone home to do all the activation yourself via iTunes after agreeing to a two-year plan extension. Just bending over isn't good enough any more, now you have to bend over so much it would take Stephen Hawking to figure out how many different dimensions you're being bent over in.

Let's do the math, shall we? iPhone $600 (because really, are you going to pay for the $500 version once you've gone this far?) $20 extra a month for 2 years: $480; $36 activation fee; grand totaling to: $1,116 on top of the $1,176 that I would already pay for staying with ATT for 2 years with no changes to my current reaming plan! And that's not including taxes, other hidden fees, and the "oops we realized where we can make even more money" fees that they will probably charge down the line like they did for the 7pm off peak (which was once standard by the way) and text messaging. Funny how their contracts are written so they can increase any fees they feel like, but you'll be charged $175 if you decide to change your mind.

The bottom line, I would still like to get an iPhone, but only if I can take all the money I will spend on it and cram it down the throat of the ATT CEO.

Want to see more number crunching but in a less wordy and ranty form? Check out engadget's cool iPhone cost matrix.