In the USA it was AT&T. Other than that, agreed; it was an expensive smartphone. They've always been expensive smartphones, with ridiculous prices for storage (compare with Iriver H340 series). The cheapest iPhone was an iPod Touch.
It wasn't just "an expensive smartphone". It redefined how much the category cost. These days we shrug off a $1000 price tag so it's difficult to remember how extreme it was by the standards of the time, but "expensive smartphone"s in those days were $300 unlocked.
