Filed under: iPhone
O2 pay-as-you-go iPhone plans announced, un-announced
UK mobile provider O2 posted a page earlier today offering the iPhone 3G with a pay-as-you-go plan costing £300 (≈ $593) for the 8GB model, and £360 (≈ $711) for the 16GB model. The plan includes six months of WiFi and browsing. After the first six months, you can purchase browsing and WiFi access for £10 (≈ $20) monthly.
The offer is available to all new and upgrading customers who purchase an iPhone 3G with Pay & Go until December 31.
The page, however, was taken down moments later, replaced with a page that omitted pricing. Some of the other pages (Tariffs, for example) were not found on the server. Strange. The page says that more information "will be available shortly so come back in a few days."
Your conspiracy theories are always welcome in comments.
Thanks, Matt, Visa, and Lewis!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
UnusualAspect said 5:51PM on 6-25-2008
This is promising... I don't tend to spend much in outgoing calls on my current O2 PAYG mobile (circa £5 per month for calls and text) and I much prefer my costs being upfront and honest.
18 months - cheapest contract - £700
18 months - payg - £570 inc my average calls charge
That's assuming that they don't screw me over on the per min call charges of course...
plus presuming someone can get skype or similar going on iphone2.0, call charges should be greatly reduced
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Tony said 7:04PM on 6-25-2008
I was thinking that.. At the moment I'm on Simplicity+data plan at £22.50/mo.
Even assuming I kept up £10 of call charges (which I wouldn't.. I don't make many calls mostly SMS and Web) for £300 with 6 months free data 18 months would cost me £600. Cheapest plan £639 - plus an 18 month lockin. With the PayG I could walk away anytime.
That's if I believe the pricing of course.. seems a little *too* cheap to me.
Tony said 7:15PM on 6-25-2008
A poster on ilounge also mentioned some kind of minimum topup.. unfortunately without seeing the page I can't say what that refers to - if it's saying you have to topup £10/mo to get the free data for example that can affect the numbers somewhat. I guess we'll have to wait until they officially anounce it.
Tony said 7:48PM on 6-25-2008
Ahh someone made a copy/paste of the page.
Basically the more you top up each month the more free minutes you get.. just like normal PayG plans really. Nothing to worry about on that front then.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=5654603&postcount=3
Visa said 5:59PM on 6-25-2008
The tarriffs page was up earlier too, it said the normal O2 PAYG tarriffs apply, other than the optional special iphone 10 pounds data extra, and the wifi was same as contract, all the cloud and bt openzone hotspots.
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shaun said 6:18PM on 6-25-2008
Assuming it's real then it sounds about right when compared to other phones. The 6 months internet is especially generous. The thing is, iPhone and the web are practically joined at the hip so when the free internet runs out you would start spending a fortune on topping up the credit.
If it isn't real then erase that last paragraph from your memory
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Tony said 7:06PM on 6-25-2008
£10/mo for the data plan isn't a lot at all.. definately not a fortune considering the cheapest contract is £30. That means if you spend less than £20/mo on calls it's cheaper to get the PayG version.
shaun said 7:10PM on 6-25-2008
oh I didn't realise you could buy an unltd plan on pay as you go, that's quite a bit better then. I'm with o2 on pay as you go (until july 11th!) and its about £4 per MB!
KarlW said 8:26PM on 6-25-2008
Tony: only the contract is cheaper. The handset is more than double the price.
Tony said 9:47PM on 6-25-2008
Except with the contract you're locked in to a minimum of £30/mo for 18 months. Overall the PayG is a *lot* cheaper if you're not using the bundled minutes.
Minimum cost on contract, £639. If you want to change phones after 12 months (or sooner) you still have to pay that amout.
Cost on PayG assuming £5/mo calls (I'm under that presently but it'll do for a ballpark) and £10/mo data for 12 months: £510
The break even point is at £12/mo. If you spend less than that on calls the PayG is cheaper.
If you upgrade before 18 months - my average for the last few years has been about once every 9 months, and I've never had a phone more than 12 months - then the PayG gets even cheaper, because you don't have to buy your way out of a contract.
At 12 months the break even point is £23/mo - if you spend less than that and intend to keep the phone for 12 months, get the PayG otherwise get the contract.
sally the mac said 6:23PM on 6-25-2008
The page says that more information "will be available shortly so come back in a few days."
The O2 site has said this since the WWDC - longest "few days" of my life!
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Toby Adams said 7:02PM on 6-25-2008
Very promising stuff if it all is as it says above... The 6 month thing is new to me and the wi-fi / 3g after that should be £12.50 as a bolt on and yes, usual payg rates apply. free visual voice mail too if i am to be believed,
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Sam said 7:42PM on 6-25-2008
This sounds about right to me, too.
Incidentally, the linked article is wrong about how PAYG works in the UK - it doesn't allow "users to eschew a contract for a monthly “top-up” fee that provides a specified number of prepaid minutes and text messages." You prepay the money, only, so you have a certain amount of credit on the account. This is expressed in monetary terms - e.g. £4.67 - and you can "top-up" by certain amounts, usually between £10 and £50. Then you'd pay something like 20p per minute for a phone call, and 10p for a text. You also see tariffs where you'd pay 25p/min for the first 3 minutes of outbound calls of the day, then after that it drops to 5p/min for the rest of the day. Remember that in the US, you're very much in the minority having to pay to receive mobile calls under normal circumstances. We can go months (years perhaps, although I've never been unpopular for long enough to have tested that out :-P) without topping up, although usually you would have to have a chargeable event every so often for the account to remain active, otherwise you'd probably lose your number. This can include receiving a call, as although mobile users don't pay to receive calls, we have entirely separate non-geographic area codes for mobiles which the calling party usually pays more per minute to call than a landline.
So, if one could conceivably have a mobile phone which they never top up, how does the network try to have their customers top up regularly? The answer, to a European at least, is very simple - offer extras which are paid out of the pre-paid balance every month, or incentives which require a minimum top-up every month but don't come out of the balance.
O2 call paid extras Bolt Ons™, and the £10 browsing and WiFi is an example of this. Incidentally, O2 offer a Web Bolt On for £7.50/month, but this doesn't include WiFi.
Incentive based extras are usually separate tariffs, so you can't have more than one active at a time, and the size of the allowance is based on how much you top up (although as noted earlier, you're not charged for the allowance and the full balance remains available for out of allowance services). O2 have a number of these, such as a tariff which offers a certain amount of free off-peak calls, and one which offers a certain amount of free texts.
Despite the fact that PAYG these days is fairly good value, many users will find a pay monthly contract better for them - not least because you get a free or heavily subsidised phone in exchange for signing your soul over to them for 18 months!
Sam
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ArcticFox said 8:03AM on 6-26-2008
Not entirely true, ive been with o2 for years now, i pay £10 a month and i get 500 free minutes/texts to any o2 mobile and local rate phone as well as 10% back on any topup i make, if i dont pay £10 a month i dont get any of that and i just get what credit i top up on the phone.
codeman38 said 8:04PM on 6-25-2008
...Why can't AT&T have a pay-as-you-go iPhone plan Stateside? -_-
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Hawkman said 8:59PM on 6-25-2008
That's a lot better than I expected. Only £30 ($60) more than the original iPhone was selling for a matter of months ago, and that had a contract attached (in theory, at least). This almost puts it in my price range (I'm unlocked and on a dirt-cheap Vodafone contract, gagging to upgrade my painful GPRS access to 3G...)
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Tony said 10:10PM on 6-25-2008
Just wait for the unlock.. I'm sure it'll come. In the meantime get the 3G iphone and sit on PayG for a while - you've got 6 months free data to play with and if you don't use it as an actual phone during that time it's not costing you any more.
steve ballmer said 11:11PM on 6-25-2008
Typical!
Why do you people take this abuse?
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
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Dave Cryer said 10:24AM on 6-26-2008
An easier way of working it out.
Contract:
On £35/month tariff, total cost for 16GB is £789
On £45/month tariff, dropping to £35 after month 9, cost for 16GB is £779
On PAYG, cost of phone plus 12 months of extra data is £480 without any call allowance.
So if you make less than £16.66 per calls on your curreny PAYG then you are better to go PAYG. More than this and better to go for contract. Also don't forget that contract gets you a lot more inclusive minutes for your money.
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Jash Sayani said 1:24PM on 6-26-2008
Same with Vodafone India.
See: www.vodafone.in
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