Fancy a non-contract iPhone 3G? It’ll cost you? How much you ask? Well that’ll be £350 for the 8GB version or a full £400 for the 16GB model courtesy of O2. In all honesty, though neither option is cheap, it certainly beats the carrier free pricing fiasco that swept much of Europe shortly after the original iPhone was launched.
Of course, O2 is offering a full raft of Pay As You Go options to entice those unwilling to sign up to a monthly contract. Paying between £10 and £14 a month in call credit will net you 500 free minutes to any landline or O2 cellphone. If you spend between £15 and £29 you’ll get 1,000 minutes, while £30 or more provides unlimited calls (presumably on the same terms i.e. to landline numbers and O2 mobiles).
One of the big sweeteners is that PAYG customers will get unlimited Internet access, including 3G and O2 Wi-Fi, free, for the first year and then for the measly sum of £10 per month thereafter.
The main drawback of the whole package is that text messages don’t get a look in, costing their usual 10p each. Apparently the iPhone’s Visual Voicemail and on-the-fly call merging are also exempt from the PAYG plan, which is worth bearing in mind should you wish to avoid a nasty surprise.
The prepaid phones and plans will be available from both O2 and Apple Stores from September 16th so there is still time to get saving if you have managed to resist the lure of an iPhone on contract so far.
About Fraser MacInnes
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