Brier Dudley of the Seattle Times offers an interview with Glenn Lurie, president of National Distribution for AT&T’s wireless operations, responsible for National Retail Operations, National Dealers, Direct Mail/Direct Response, Resale, eStore Sales and Service via Cingular.com, as well as Prepaid/Hybrid Sales

The interview offers background on Lurie and his history with AT&T, but also goes into some details of the iPhone we haven’t heard of in the past.

When discussing the potential success of the iPhone Lurie said;

“The anticipation that we’re seeing, the buzz we’re seeing, at least for me, has far exceeded our expectations of how important this would be to the business and us,”

The interviewer mentioned that he was sceptical on the price of the iPhone compared to current competition, Lurie answered with;

Here’s how I’d explain it. The most popular iPod, a 4-gigabyte Nano, costs $200. If you’ve got a RIM BlackBerry or Palm Treo, you probably paid $200 minimum. Then you’ve got a phone that you got for free or paid maybe $50.

You’re at $450 or $500. The question you’ve got to be able to ask yourself is, is this device going to be able to replace those three, so you carry one? That’s the question.

I think when people get their hands on it and really experience it — the touch screen is phenomenal, this touch screen is like nothing you’ve ever used — to experience that, the skepticism, I think, around some of those things will go away.

There are other things — you have the widgets, some of the Google applications that are coming — there are just so many things here that the price will not be an issue.

When questioned on whether a subsidy would be offered for the iPhone Lurie said;

We’re not talking about that.