Optus launches iPhone 3G prices in full at last – good value?

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 03 July 2008 12:31

Your IT - Mobility

The voice, data and iPhone 3G pricing for pre-post and post-paid plans has finally launched, and after a struggle to get loading under the weight of massive interest, they’ve loaded at last. Here are the details!

The wave of web surfers trying to find out what Optus wants to charge to buy and use the iPhone 3G on its network seems to be over as its pricing pages finally load normally again.

The post-paid pricing details are here, while the pre-paid pricing details are here.

Let’s start with the pre-paid pricing first, as it’s shorter, although it’s probably still too many caps, too many bonus this and bonus thats. I suppose it’s too much to ask for really simple, straightforward plans, but hey, we’re living in the 21st century, where terms and conditions rule the day and make things complicated.

Anyway, on with the show.

The 8GB iPhone 3G will cost AUD $729 outright, while the 16GB iPhone 3G will cost AUD $849.

Only Optus’ pre-paid Turbo Caps are available, and there are $30, $40, $50, $70 and $100 cap options. These give more data than the traditional non-iPhone Turbo Caps, but they do give you a higher value of calls than each cap amount suggests, which is explained as MyCredit, MyBonus and MyTime. If you’re an existing Optus customer, you know how these work already, but read on for the explanation if you’re not.

Also, before we get to the pre-paid and post-plan nitty gritty, you need to know that pre-paid plans will give you an initial $400 bonus and an initial 1GB of data, which lasts for the first 30 days of your cap, although all pre-paid plans get unlimited browsing until August 31.

Thereafter, if you recharge your pre-paid plan with the $40 Turbo Cap (or higher), you’ll get the “extra bonus” data every time you recharge, not on a 30 day basis.

You also need to know that for national voice calls you are charged at 78c per minute, so we're looking at per minute billing here, not per 30 seconds as for Optus’ other pre-paid and post-paid plans, so if you talk a lot you need to take this into account. This means that if you speak for two minutes and 1 second, you'll be charged for three minutes. That’s how I understand it, anyway.

It's a sneaky way for phone companies to chew through your cap plan faster, but it's the way it is. There's also a 35c flagfall for each call you make.

So how are the pre-paid caps broken down, and what are the post-paid caps? Continued on page 2.