Will the iPhone 3GS come to 3 Mobile?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 09 June 2009 13:38

Opinion and Analysis

Vodafone and Optus have announced they’ll soon be offering the brand new iPhone 3G S to customers from June 26 onwards, and with Telstra expected to make an announcement at some stage given they currently sell iPhones, will 3 Mobile ever sell the iPhone?

News of the iPhone 3G S has probably now have filtered to all corners of the globe, even though 24 hours haven’t yet passed since its announcement, such is the power of and interest in Apple’s handheld computing technologies.

Already, Vodafone and Optus have set up sites promising to send those who register information of each company’s respective iPhone 3G S offerings, but so far, Telstra has been silent.

Telstra’s logo was on display during the WWDC keynote along with other telcos, so it clearly will continue selling the iPhone, probably at the exact same phone and data plans it does now.

It’d be nice to see Telstra offer some competition against Vodafone’s “unlimited” voice and 2GB data plan but there are no signs of more competitive plans as yet that I can see, with Telstra still able to claim the Next G 850MHz difference, something the iPhone 3G and the 3G S both take advantage of.

Although 3 Mobile offers an iPhone 3G SIM plan with a series of voice and data plan options, it has never offered the iPhone 3G in Australia – despite its Hong Kong arm offering the iPhone 3G to anyone that wants it over there.

Now that Vodafone and 3 Mobile have merged in Australia, there’s a chance that both sides of the new entity will get access, especially seeing as Virgin Mobile, a subsidiary of Optus, started selling the iPhone 3G a few months after it launched last year.

So, I called 3 Mobile to ask. I was told that it had been a popular question today, but that there are no plans to offer the iPhone 3G S at the moment.

Yes, the merger with Vodafone and Vodafone’s existing access to the iPhone meant that anything could happen in the future, but it really seems to mean that while 3 Mobile could well be selling the iPhone 3G S down the track, or a future model, it’s not a big priority at the moment as the merger proceeds and Vodafone is selling the 3G and new 3G S anyway.

The iPhone 3G S still lacks video call or video chat capabilities, but in almost every other respect now finally at least matches and/or continues surpassing the capabilities of its competitors.

Where does the iPhone match or exceed competitors like Nokia’s N-Series? Please read on to page 2…