AT&T and Apple have held an agreement that At&t would be the lone carrier for the Apple Iphone, until 2009. But At&t now wants it to be extended to 2010, before other US carriers can offer service for the device.
AT&T which already domainates the land lines and now cell phone users, would like to keep it under their contracts. Since they own a large share of the phone companies, they do not have a lot of options other than to keep the subscribers that they already have and to steal other companies subscribers.
Though AT&T chief and Apple never did tell the public just how long there agreement really was, it was first thought to be until 2012.