The bulky phone bill for the recently launched iPhone has rattled environmentalists and AT&T customers alike, who consider the scrupulous noting of every text message, call or Web-session an exaggeration.
There are iPhone owners who receive phone bills printed on both sides that reach more than 100 pages, but there are also exceptions mentioning no less than 300 pages. For these huge amounts of paper to be printed many trees have to be sacrificed and, according to blogger Muhammad Saleem, Apple’s aim to have 10 million iPhone users by the end of 2008 would require the logging of about 74,535 trees annually.
AT&T responded officially, through the voice of spokesman Mark Siegel: "We can always give people a summary bill. It's little more than what you owe this month. And there's always the online option, too, which means you never get a paper bill."
Unofficially, it appears that the carrier has already applied the change, switching from paper to digital on August 10. At least this is what an AT&T call center employee said on Saleem’s blog, as a reply to his calculations:
“I actually work for an AT&T call center, and while I’m not defending AT&T, I thought the following should be known:
1. AT&T is aware they are killing a lot of trees and is just starting to prevent it by going to “summary billing”–meaning no more call/data details for every phone on the account, just basic charges. This happens by default for every new customer as of August 10th.
2. We are told to encourage customers to use ATT.com to view their detailed bill online rather than looking at all the specifics on their physical bill. We’re also told to encourage paperless billing altogether; an option offered to customers when they sign up their phone number online. All of this is offered free on their website and is available to them 24 hours a day. There are a few exceptions where they wouldn’t be able to view their latest bill for a while, but I am still new there, so I don’t know all the specific factors that will cause this.
3. Also, any customer that changes their rate plan (which, trust me, is about half the calls I get every day) as of August 10th will automatically be put on the summary billing. They have to actually pay an extra $1.99 per month per line to view their call details now. This is where we are trying to push for the customer to view their bill online in hopes that they eventually just sign up for paperless billing. While this method of charging can be taken as two ways, A) ATT just wants to make an extra buck, or B) ATT really does care about trees and is just trying to sway customers away from viewing their bill on paper, I like to think that they are doing the latter. Though, it’s probably the former. ATT doesn’t have the greatest scruples in the world.”
AT&T’s spokesman denied these allegations, saying that "the default is to get the detailed bill. That's where things are now, but that's not to say they'll stay that way."
