IPhone on Prepaid plan pointless account balance messages

Question

We've been discussing this issue on the ATT forums, but I feel that the only way to get it addressed it by Apple.
Currently if you are on the prepaid plan you receive account balance notices after every transaction (Phone call, Mail Check, Web Browsing).
Since the iPhone has an unlimited data plan you account balance doesn't change any time you access the edge network. Unfortunately ATT still sends you a message notifying you your account balance has not changed.
At first this isn't a big issue. Dismiss the message (Which you have to do before you can access ANYTHING on your phone) and continue on. The problem is if you have your phone checking for email (which is one of the point of having a phone like the iPhone), you'll receive a message every time your phone hits the network.
These messages can pile up and this morning I had to clear 15+ messages before I could use my phone. Talk about a terrible user experience.
Also if a balance message is present while a call comes in the screen doesn't respond. You first have to lock the phone by hitting the sleep/wake button, then unlock it again hitting the same button. It took me a while to figure out what was going on with that situation.
At the bottom of the page there is a link to the ATT support thread.
Please don't reply with ... We'll just get a contract and the messages will stop. I don't want to be on a contract plan. I enjoy the prepaid plan. It works for me.
So here is what I am looking for.
1) Can the messages be stopped on the iPhone side
2) If not, could Apple add a "Dismiss All" option. That would (for me at least) be an acceptable solution.
3) Why do the messages lock the screen when there is an incoming call?
Thanks for all your help. At the least I am hoping this will make Apple aware of the problems and get them addressed
http://forums.cingular.com/cng/board/message?board.id=apple&thread.id=2116&view= bydateascending&page=1

Answer 1

There are a few points which I think need to be aired on this issue: that pre-paid is a perfectly viable option for the iPhone, that AT&T will do nothing to solve this issue, and that Apple, alone, can and should.
If pre-paid is an option both AT&T and, for less understandable reasons, Apple want to discourage, then may God help all of us pre-paid consumers. However, Apple should be interested in selling iPhones, and the deal to receive money from AT&T from subscribers is a problem, because is lessens Apple's motivation to tolerate iPhones being used as pre-paid phones, unlocked, you name it.
That said, pre-paid is a great option for those who use very few minutes (like me), who may be well-to-do foreigners only staying in America for a limited time, or who are uncertain if AT&T is a viable carrier. Tolerating it also projects a sense of respect for the consumer that Apple's target market would appreciate. I know I do.
AT&T, though, receives less of a commitment from consumers on pre-paid, and thereby less expected money, so they will do everything to fight it.
Apple, however, can easily modify their software to politely receive these notifications from AT&T, and then only inform the user if they choose to be so informed of the account balance in the iPhone's settings, or, even better, go into a spread-sheet like "Balance history" tab to explicitly view this information.
This is what Apple can do. It may take them a couple of man-hours to roll this into the next iPhone software update, but Apple: consider this worth it in light of being able to portray yourself as being on the consumer's side in the consumer-carrier tug-of-war that this, on however small a scale, has become.