Although there’s been plenty of gloom and doom forecast for AT&T when they lose iPhone exclusivity next month, the reality is something else indeed -- a full 90 percent of those customers are still tied to contracts which will be costly to get out of.

All Things Digital is reporting that AT&T may have less to fear from the Verizon iPhone than initially expected -- at least for now. According to Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski, a very high percentage of AT&T iPhone users are in various stages of a two-year agreement that will be expensive to break.

That number is pegged at 90 percent, according to analyst Jeffrey Fidacaro, as well as Paczkowski’s independent confirmation with AT&T. Fidacaro believes that at most AT&T may lose upwards of two million iPhone users to rival Verizon Wireless, which is “hardly a mass exodus.”

So how did AT&T manage to snare those users in the first place? Last year’s extremely tempting iPhone 4 was one part, coupled with the carrier pushing up eligibility dates for existing iPhone customers -- the temptation was too much for many, and that locked such customers into another two-year agreement, with a $325 early termination fee should they decide to jump ship before it runs out.

AT&T isn’t the first carrier to lose their exclusivity, after all -- Telefónica Europe has been through this before when the company had to share the iPhone with other carriers such as Orange or Vodafone, and there was little churn rate (customers who leave one carrier for another) to speak of.

“Ever since Vodafone has started selling the iPhone in January, we see absolutely no evidence of people leaving us, churning on the iPhone going back to Orange or Vodafone, so [we are] very comfortable with our iPhone volumes,” Telefónica Europe CEO Matthew Key announced back in February of last year. “We continue to out-trade the market and no sign of churn whatsoever.”

So rest easy, AT&T… at least for another year or two.

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