iPhone and iPod touch now talking with Google Talk

Stephen Withers
Friday, 04 July 2008 03:46

Your IT - Mobility

The widespread use of IM from the iPhone 3G is seen as a potential revenue threat to AT&T (Apple's carrier partner in the US) as it offers unlimited email and web data on its iPhone plans but charges extra for text messages (SMS).

Australian carriers Optus and Telstra include text messages in their caps, while providing fairly stingy data allowances. Even on Optus's $179 cap, which includes $1500 worth of voice calls (at 35c flagfall plus 35c per 30 seconds) and texts (at 25c per message), subscribers only get 1G of data per month.

And on lesser plans, Optus rakes in an extra $30 per month from users who want to increase their data allowance from 100M to 250M.

Clearly, web-based messaging will be less of an issue for carriers outside the US, which generally do not offer unlimited data plans for the iPhone - ironically, that may be one reason why the original model was more popular in the US than in Europe.