Apple has posted the rate plans for the iPhone and a few reader questions have been answered.

Existing AT&T customers can keep their rate plan and add a $20 a month iPhone data plan. These customers can activate their own phones through iTunes. There are also special plans for new iPhone customers as well as family plans.

It looks like all customers will have to extend their contracts by 2 years in order to activate the iPhone, if the fine print is to be believed. “Minimum new 2-year wireless service plan and activation fee required to activate iPhone features, including iPod. Plans are subject to AT&T credit approval.” They may even try to charge existing customers an activation fee, but we sort of doubt that. Let us know.

It looks like those of you who don’t have AT&T and were planning on just buying this and using it as an iPod until your contract with another carrier ran out might run into some difficulty. But that wasn’t too many of you, right?

All in all, signing a 2 year contract for the privilege of paying full price for a phone is (let us put this gently, it’s nothing personal) not recommended by this website.

IPhone Rate Plans [Apple]

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