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Many people groused when Apple announced that AT&T (formally Cingular) would have exclusive rights to the iPhone when the iPod/phone/Internet device hybrid is released next month. Well, it turns out Apple/AT&T's agreement is the mother of all such deals.

Why? Because AT&T will be the sole provider of the iPhone in the U.S. for five years, according to USA Today—an unheard of amount of time for such an agreement in the cell phone industry. So, if you don't want to become an AT&T customer (either by breaking your current contract or waiting until it runs out), it may not be until 2012 that you'll have a chance at buying an iPhone.

This almost certainly means there's no possibility of a CDMA edition of the iPhone until that time as well. That last point is pretty ironic, as Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest CDMA operator, was Apple's first choice to carry the iPhone.

Talks between Apple and Verizon started a couple of years ago, but an agreement couldn't be reached because Apple wanted too much control, which apparently wasn't a problem for AT&T.

Although AT&T hasn't revealed the terms of its agreement with Apple, it is likely similar to what Apple asked of Verizon. AT&T, the country's largest mobile operator uses GSM rather than CDMA technology. GSM is used for most cellular networks worldwide today, accounting for about 2 billion subscribers worldwide.

Verizon CEO Denny Strigl asserts the carrier has a "very good response" to the iPhone coming this summer. We'll see.

It's not all bad news for those unwilling to sign an exclusive agreement with AT&T for any iPhone. While there won't be an unlocked iPhone, which would allow you to pick any GSM carrier, it appears AT&T may make the iPhone the coolest pre-paid cell phone ever, reports the Boy Genius (see screen shot below). That would mean you could get an iPhone without a contract and pay for your minutes and data usage as you go.

This development has the potential to greatly increase the number of iPhones sold, likely pushing many of those on the edge over.

One question, however: What will the pre-paid edition of the iPhone cost? The 'subsidized' version already goes for $499 for the 4GB edition and $599 for the 8GB model with a 2-year contract. That doesn't leave much room for AT&T to inflate the price of the pre-paid version of the iPhone.

Or does it? Perhaps the carrier and Apple are banking on people paying a premium on the already expensive device just to have the flexiblity and freedom of a pre-paid plan.

More on the iPhone
The quad-band GSM/EDGE iPhone includes a 3.5-inch wide touch-screen display and is only 11.6 millimeters thick. Specs include 4 GB or 8 GB of storage, a petite home button, a 2 megapixel camera on the back, speaker, mic and iPod dock connector on the bottom, and a ring/silent switch and volume controls on one

It also has a 3.5mm headset jack and a SIM card tray, of course. A light sensor controls screen brightness to save power, a proximity sensor tells the iPhone turn off the touch screen when you bring it to your ear, and an accellerometer automatically switches the iPhone to portrait or landscape mode, depending on how you're holding the device.

While the iPhone offers Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0, with the ability to switch from a cellular call to a WLAN automatically, it lacks 3G, which is expected to be available in the future.

The iPhone runs on a version of the Mac OS X.

Apple chose not to go with keyboard or even stylus input, but rather invented a new technology the company is calling Multitouch. iPhone includes a full QWERTY soft-keyboard

Multitouch places the emphasis of input and navigation squarely on a one's fingers. The technology is, supposed to be much more accurate than a regular touch display - with support for multi-finger gestures and the ability to ignore inadvertent touches.

A feature called Visual Voicemail, developed with AT&T, lets users look at a listing of their voicemails, decide which messages to listen to, then go directly to those messages without listening to the prior messages.