AT&T played games with iPhone owners' wireless dreams this morning. Again.

For a short while, the cellco had a notice up on its Web site proclaiming free access to its 17,000 US Wi-Fi hotspots for all iPhones. Then, just like when it made the same announcement a couple months back, AT&T was all "Oops. Sorry. We take it back." Again.

The first tease happened back in May, when the company began offering free Wi-Fi for Laptop Connect customers who use its 3G data service for computers, CNET's News.com reports. Then, as now, it mistakenly posted news of free access for iPhone users as well.

A company can easily make that kind of mistake once. When it happens twice, we start to wonder if maybe the "mistake" was intentional. Either that, or someone at AT&T just likes playing sick jokes on poor, hapless iPhone owners.

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