l'iPhone est arrivee.
..and with it pricing chaos!
Firstly the phone; forget Apple, you can't buy from them (Pour acheter l'iPhone, ou le voir en action, visitez l'agence France Télécom / Orange la plus proche de chez vous.).
So you pay 399Euro plus either 12 or 24 months contract.
Or you pay 549Euro and use it with another Orange tariff.
Or you pay 649Euro and use it as a Pay-n-Go on the Orange network.
Or you pay 749Euro and have it unlocked for use on any network......
Which should see lots of German iPhone "tourists" voting with their wallet against T-Mobile's 999Euro unlocked tariff...
But I digress; calling plans.
So you pay 49/59/79/119Euro for 2, 3, 5 or 8 hour plans (24 months min.)
Or you pay 53.50/63.50/83.50/123.50 for 2,3,5 or 8 hour plans (12 month min.)
So the minimum price of an iPhone is 749Euro (unblocked) and the most expensive is 3,255Euro for the full-monty.
Which begs the question; why pay the full-monthy?
Because whilst you can buy extra SMS at standard rates call-charges over plan are 0.37Euro/min which whilst not exactly Pay-n-Go prices are not exactly Pro package prices either.
Then there's data.
Access by modem, VoIP, peer-to-peer and to newsgroups are strictly forbidden and anyone exceeding 500mb/month will have their bandwidth capped; I'm a bit shaky on my comms math but 500 over 8 hours seems to imply bandwidth in excess of EDGE capability. Could this restriction applies to WiFi hotspot bandwidth as well?
Moving on; video voicemail; or rather no video voicemail. Not available until Feb 2008 anyway.
And finally WiFi Hotspots (that bit that get's users around bandwidth restricted EDGE speeds); 100 hours per month.
But only for subscribers paying 3,255Euro.
Everyone else is restricted to 10 hours per month.
Amazingly for Orange, who have a wide number of fuller-featured Pro packages for commercial users, the iPhone (even the 3,255Euro plan) is sold as a personal package rather than Pro package....
Go figure.
..and with it pricing chaos!
Firstly the phone; forget Apple, you can't buy from them (Pour acheter l'iPhone, ou le voir en action, visitez l'agence France Télécom / Orange la plus proche de chez vous.).
So you pay 399Euro plus either 12 or 24 months contract.
Or you pay 549Euro and use it with another Orange tariff.
Or you pay 649Euro and use it as a Pay-n-Go on the Orange network.
Or you pay 749Euro and have it unlocked for use on any network......
Which should see lots of German iPhone "tourists" voting with their wallet against T-Mobile's 999Euro unlocked tariff...
But I digress; calling plans.
So you pay 49/59/79/119Euro for 2, 3, 5 or 8 hour plans (24 months min.)
Or you pay 53.50/63.50/83.50/123.50 for 2,3,5 or 8 hour plans (12 month min.)
So the minimum price of an iPhone is 749Euro (unblocked) and the most expensive is 3,255Euro for the full-monty.
Which begs the question; why pay the full-monthy?
Because whilst you can buy extra SMS at standard rates call-charges over plan are 0.37Euro/min which whilst not exactly Pay-n-Go prices are not exactly Pro package prices either.
Then there's data.
Access by modem, VoIP, peer-to-peer and to newsgroups are strictly forbidden and anyone exceeding 500mb/month will have their bandwidth capped; I'm a bit shaky on my comms math but 500 over 8 hours seems to imply bandwidth in excess of EDGE capability. Could this restriction applies to WiFi hotspot bandwidth as well?
Moving on; video voicemail; or rather no video voicemail. Not available until Feb 2008 anyway.
And finally WiFi Hotspots (that bit that get's users around bandwidth restricted EDGE speeds); 100 hours per month.
But only for subscribers paying 3,255Euro.
Everyone else is restricted to 10 hours per month.
Amazingly for Orange, who have a wide number of fuller-featured Pro packages for commercial users, the iPhone (even the 3,255Euro plan) is sold as a personal package rather than Pro package....
Go figure.
