Edible Apple

Rejoice folks. At the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Pasadena, California yesterday, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson indicated that the iPhone’s exclusive deal with AT&T might soon be coming to an end.

There will be a day when you’re not exclusive with the iPhone. When that day comes, I’m sure that will be in Apple’s interests, and ours also.

Well, I suppose he didn’t say that AT&T’s exclusivity contract with Apple would be ending next week, but the mere fact that AT&T is publicly acknowledging that their cozy relationship goes on forever seems to imply that Stephenson sees the writing on the wall.

In regards to the large number of complaints about AT&T’s shoddy network, Stephenson said that he puts his iPhone through the ringer with heavy emailing and web surfing when traveling through big cities like LA, Boston, and San Francisco.  “I beat those phones up,” he said, and when something goes wrong, he instantly calls up his service support team to get them up to speed and have them fix any problems.  “I’m on it like a hawk”, Stephenson said later on.

Well, it’s good to know that AT&T is putting the iPhone through some heavy CEO quality control testing.