Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Yes,
I know Jobs talked about global pricing parity, but that's $US199 for
an 8GB iPhone 2.0 on a two year contract with AT&T. It might
translate to $AU220, but that's almost certainly dependent on you
taking out a two year contract with your local telco. Optus and
Vodafone recently announced they'd be selling the iPhone 2.0 in
Australia, but we're still waiting on them to confirm the pricing.
There's
no word yet as to how much a US iPhone 2.0 will cost if you want to own
it outright rather pay it off on a plan. Jobs didn't say
anything about pricing parity for buying an iPhone outright. We don't even know if you will be
able to buy them outright in the US, or in Australia.
There
are plenty of reasons why Australians would want to buy an iPhone
outright rather than tie themselves down to a two year plan. The
biggest reason would that so far Telstra has stuck to its knitting and
refrained from announcing an Australian iPhone. So all those Next
G customers out there who want to get a slice of iPhone goodness will
be forced to break their Telstra contracts, pay out the contract to
Telstra and then sign up for a new contract with Vodafone or Optus -
neither of which can match Next G's coverage footprint.
If
you've got 12 months to run on a Next G contract, breaking free will probably cost
you at least $AU600. You'd be crazy to do this if you could buy an
iPhone 2.0 outright for a good price and then start using it with your
Next G SIM card. If buying an iPhone outright from the US is cheaper
than buying one outright in Australia, Next G customers will ensure the
grey market for iPhones continues. If Telstra doesn't add the iPhone
2.0 to its offerings soon, it might find its customers have already bought them
outright elsewhere.
If it turns out you
can't buy the second-gen iPhones outright, Next G customers would
probably be better off grabbing themselves a cheap iPhone 1.0 and
unlocking it to work on Next G. At least you'll get EDGE data speeds.
This should tide you over until your Next G contract runs out. By this
time Telstra might offer the iPhone 2.0 and hopefully market pressures
will have forced the telco to offer a decent data bundle to go with it.
If Telstra doesn't offer the iPhone 2.0 by the time your contract
expires, you can consider changing providers without penalty. By then
Apple might have started selling the iPhone 2.0 outright, or you might
even be able to pick up a secondhand iPhone 2.0.
So
if you're locked into a long phone contract and you recently spent
$AU400+ importing an iPhone 1.0 from the US, you haven't made an
expensive blunder. Sit back and enjoy your first-gen iPhone while the
dust settles and then evaluate your options when your contract runs out.
David Bass
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