iPhone Update; AT&T Overcharging Users 300%?

The next generation iPhone is only a few months away from being released. We may not get iPhone 5 this year but iPhone 4s is expected to be good enough of an upgrade for Apple not to lose a lot of momentum. There does seem to be a whole lot of confusion on what iPhone 5 will be all about. But according to Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo, the phone has a good chance of being a global one. That means buyers of that phone will be able to make phone calls around the globe using CDMA and GSM networks.

Verizon did manage to sell a ton of iPhone 4 units but it could have done much better had Apple offered AT&T and Verizon phones at the same time. It seems that will be the case this time around. With Apple planning to enhance iTunes with the cloud, its phones will become more popular than ever. For instance, A recent Apple patent shows the company’s plan to use the cloud to allow its customers store more music on their devices.

In order for Apple to continue to be successful, all the players involved need to get their acts together. The company is already getting a lot of grief over tracking its users. As it turned out, AT&T is dropping the ball too. A lawsuit against AT&T alleges the company may be overcharging customers by 300%. AT&T is not buying the claim:

Accurate billing is clearly important and, unfortunately, there have been some incorrect claims about our data usage billing practices. We properly bill for all data that our customers send and receive, including data activity that runs in the background on smartphones and other powerful data devices. Data usage for emailing, downloading applications, browsing the web, downloading a video or streaming music is applied to a customers’ data plan. So are real-time updates to applications, such as weather, sports scores, or stock tickers.

The good news is with Sprint and T-Mobile getting iPhone in the future, people will have more options and won’t have to put up with AT&T.