Intellectual Ore

Much hype surrounds today’s launch of the 3G iPhone by AT&T, but what does it cost?  The minimum one can pay, as a new AT&T customer: $199 for the phone, plus a two-year contract for $69.99/month.  Over two years, a 3G iPhone customer will pay $1878.96 rock-bottom, but once taxes, “line charges”, “universal service fees”, AT&T’s $36 “activation fee”, “municipal recovery charges”, text plans ($5/month for the privilege of putting some 28,000 bytes of data onto AT&T’s network), and other upgrades are considered, it’s going to run at least $3000 over two years.  Is this phone really worth $1500/year?