3 Mobile’s iPhone 3GS – don’t buy it?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 18 June 2009 12:25

Your IT - Mobility

3 Mobile, now part of Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA), has finally acquired the right to sell the iPhone 3G S in its portfolio of phones, but unless 3 Mobile has a super deal that seriously undercuts Vodafone, why would you buy an iPhone from 3?

Although supposed pricing from Optus has leaked to the Internet, with no true confirmation expected until June 26 next week, 3 Mobile has finally announced that it too will sell the new iPhone 3G S.

It makes Australia the most iPhone friendly nation in the world, with all the major telcos now offering the iPhone 3G S in competition with each other, something that is worlds apart from AT&T’s exclusive multi-year agreement to sell the iPhone in the US.

Apple executives are said to be very pleased at how the iPhone experiment has worked in Australia, but due to that “multi-year” exclusive deal, US citizens have to take AT&T and the iPhone, or get an iPod Touch instead.

So, with 3 Mobile issuing a statement through its new parent company VHA, isn’t this great and long awaited news for 3 Mobile customers wanting an iPhone of their very own on a 24 month plan, rather than needing to buy an iPhone outright to take advantage of 3 Mobile’s previous iPhone plan?

Well, sure. If you’re a 3 Mobile customer and you’ve been waiting for it to deliver the iPhone, you’ll be able to get one in July. No, not June 26, but what’s a few more days if you’ve been waiting this long already?

The real question will be what 3 Mobile decides to charge for its iPhone 3G S. Sadly, no-one has yet offered any official pricing, but we do know what Vodafone and 3 Mobile are charging for the HTC Magic Google Android iPhone clone.

Although there are a range of plans, the “big” plan is Vodafone’s AUD $114 plan for unlimited mobile and landline calls within Australia (for business and consumer customers) and 2GB of data – on a 24 month plan, and with the HTC Magic supplied at $0 upfront.

Vodafone also owns a 2G network, so doesn’t charge its users extra data charges when they roam out of capital cities – unlike 3 Mobile which is forced to roam via Telstra’s 2G EDGE network (or its 3G network if your 3G phone also works on the 850MHz frequency).

Continued on page 2… please read on!