Australian operator Optus revealed its pricing plan for the release of the new iPhone 3G S this morning – and it’s very similar to the deal for the old iPhone 3G. Almost identical, in fact. And those who are watching their wallets are still waiting on a price-cut for the existing 3G model.
The mainstay of the new contracts is the Timeless Plan for the 32GB iPhone 3G S. It’s a minimum $99-a-month package with no initial charge, and minimum contract length of 24 months. For this, you get a 32GB iPhone 3G S, unlimited nationals calls and text messages and 1.5GB of mobile internet browsing. And when the 24 month contract is up, you have to start paying 15 dollars a month for your 1.5GB of mobile data. And that’s the big difference between the new deal and the old deal, right there. Your mobile data is 15 dollars a month cheaper for the first two years.
As for the other deals… well, it’s a bit of a mess, to be honest. Check out this screen grab from the Optus site:
A big part of the hype surrounding the launch for the 3G S was that the prices for the existing 3G handset would be slashed down to 99 dollars. Now, obviously that’s hard to translate into a monthly fee where the cost of the handset is included in the recurring payment. But you would still expect some reduction in cost to be announced. Even a little one.
What we think?
Optus really aren’t making any friends this week. First, part of the point of the iPhone 3G S is that it’s a lot faster than the 3G. You can be pretty much guaranteed you will be using more data on the new model – but the data pricing has barely shifted. That’s NOT going to encourage people to get on-line. Second, there’s been no news regarding 3G handset prices. Now, maybe they just haven’t gotten around to making that announcement yet – but I would have expected that to be a big part of a launch like this. Finally, people are still narky about the “tethering” announcement from last week, when Optus declared it would be charging an extra 10 dollars a month to let people use their iPhone as a modem for their computer – something that a lot of other phones just do for free. Hell, even my trusty old Nokia N73 lets me connect my Mac to the web (not that I would want to use it for that – the charges would be atmospheric).
I am currently on Timeless $129 p/m, they tell you it’s unlimited calls to national landlines and mobiles, national SMS, MMS and free voicemail retrieval.
BUT, they don’t tell you the landline does NOT incl. any 13, 1300, 1800 or basically any free or corporate/customer numbers, so if you think you could call Optus, your electricity company, or the bank and you are in the queue for 45 minutes, that 45 minutes is timed and will cost you around $30-$40 dollar each time!!! I got burnt because I thought what they offered was a perfect plan to ditch the homephone… I rang them and they blamed me for not reading the fine print… I can’t wait to leave Optus, bunch of w**kers
So pls be sure YOU read the fine print and don’t call any of those numbers if you can avoided.