US mobile phone carrier AT&T is reportedly giving out 1000 free minutes to loyal customers who didn’t switched over to Verizon- the carrier that recently started offering the iPhone 4.

Reports suggest that free minutes are being given presumably to those AT&T customers who are nearing the end of their service contract with the company.

The company is pushing out a text message asking the recipient to reply ‘Yes’ to 11113020 to enjoy one thousand extra rollout minutes. After replying ‘Yes’, the user gets another message stating that the extra minutes will be applied in the next few weeks.

AT&T is sweetening the deals for the iPhone owners in order to prevent potential defections as rival carrier Verizon has recently started selling the iPhone 4.

Earlier, AT&T had the exclusive rights to sell the Apple iPhone. But, complaints about AT&T’s allegedly poor network service forced Apple to make its flagship handset available on the airwaves of Verizon also.

However, the Verizon iPhone failed to attract big swarms of customers. Contrary to expectations, only a few of AT&T’s iPhone customers has switched to Verizon.