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Vodafone to Begin Selling iPhone in UK and Ireland in Early 2010

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Vodafone today announced that it will begin offering the iPhone 3G and 3GS for sale in the UK and Ireland in early 2010.
Beginning today, Vodafone UK and Vodafone Ireland customers can register their interest in iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS at www.vodafone.co.uk/iphone and www.vodafone.ie/iphone respectively. Pricing, tariffs and availability information will be announced locally in the future.
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The news comes just one day after Orange announced that it had struck a deal with Apple to begin selling the iPhone in the UK. The launches will bring to a rapid close wireless carrier O2's exclusivity arrangement with Apple for iPhone distribution in the UK and Ireland, a status it has enjoyed since the launch of the original iPhone in those countries in November 2007 and March 2008 respectively.

Article Link: Vodafone to Begin Selling iPhone in UK and Ireland in Early 2010
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2009/09/29/vodafone-to-begin-selling-iphone-in-uk-and-ireland-in-early-2010/
Thank god for competition, I don't expect the price to vary too much between the three, but if the contracts become just a little more convincing then my money's on the table! Which of the 3 operators has the best coverage in the UK, 3G-wise? I' ve always been led to believe O2 and Vodafone were pretty good...

PS Bit sluggish on the uptake again guys! :rolleyes:
 
What about wifi?

This is good news. Hopefully O2 will have to work a little harder to keep existing iPhone subscribers with better tariffs and customer service. One point though, do Orange and Vodafone have big wifi networks around the country? O2's wifi partners give pretty widespread access. Even if it can be a little slow and localised.
 
I'd only ever been with Vodafone till I changed to O2 for the iPhone, and I would have stayed with them if they had got it in the first place.

That being said, I've been impressed with O2 on the whole. I guess I'll have to see what broadband deal Vodafone offers for their iPhone users.

Let the tariff wars begin!
 
iPhone to clean up the smartphone market.... Can't wait for this in Canada...
 
I am dreaming here, but with Vodafone getting the iPhone I hope this also points to Verizon Wireless getting the iPhone next year as well. Verizon Wireless being 45% owned by Vodaphone and their exclusive partner for overseas GSM compatibility with VZW current global phones. It’s no big deal to place a multi band CDMA/GSM chip in a phone anymore. Come on Apple and Verizon, place nice and stroke each others egos.
 
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Over the last 10 years I've had contracts with o2, T-Mobile, Orange and 3 on various handsets. O2 have been fine so far and I have no desire to leave them, but hopefully in April when my contract is due to be renegotiated they will cut me a good deal so I don't run off to someone else. Only 6 months to go...
 
alm99 said:
I am dreaming here, but with Vodafone getting the iPhone I hope this also points to Verizon Wireless getting the iPhone next year as well. Verizon Wireless being 45% owned by Vodaphone and their exclusive partner for overseas GSM compatibility with VZW current global phones. It’s no big deal to place a multi band CDMA/GSM chip in a phone anymore. Come on Apple and Verizon, place nice and stroke each others egos.
Click to expand...

When Verizon is fully LTE, then you will have a Verizon iPhone. There will never be a CDMA version of it. Enough already.
 
Looking at the official 3G coverage maps published by the regulator Ofcom earlier this year, the results are quite alarming and not what one might expect :eek: :

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/radiocomms/ifi/licensing/classes/broadband/cellular/3g/maps/3gmaps/coverage_maps.pdf

While many (including me) believe that O2 and Vodafone have the best coverage, actually Orange is way ahead (and even more so once consolidation with T-Mobile begins), and Hutchinson 3 is top.

If the price war doesn't happen, people will choose on points such as coverage. Still, at least it will spread the data hogs (including me!) across the networks so there's more bandwidth for everybody!
 
mr_matalino said:
Why are exclusive agreements ending all over the world EXCEPT FOR AT&T?!?
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Because the US doesn't have another competitor to AT&T (T-mobile uses a different 3G frequency. Sprint and Verizon are currently CDMA, Sprint going to WiMax and Verizon to LTE).

You'll have to wait until Verizon switches their network over to LTE before we get to see some solid competition.
 
i used to have a contract with 3 and always had a perfect signal! now im on O2 + quite disapointed with the coverage no where near as gud! Let 3 claim there signal is so gud coz they use O2's masts! how does that work?
 
Whichever camp you fall into this is good news.
Even if you're staying with O2 (out of choice or contract) I think service can only get better. The problems I've had seem to be a flooding of the data networks due to so many people on the one carrier with iPhones! Spreading the load will hopefully take some of the burden off O2.
There may be some price cuts too, but I don't expect too much.
 
mr_matalino said:
Why are exclusive agreements ending all over the world EXCEPT FOR AT&T?!?
Click to expand...

I have a feeling we are going to be seeing this exclusivity agreement in the States for a while. I don't necessarily agree with "there's no alternative" argument, because there is always T-Mobile (even though they are small, they could probably sell another 3-5 million phones per year. As for the different frequency TMo uses, wouldn't this just require a small tweak to the hardware?). The alright dollar reigns strongly in the States and AT&T is likely just going keep on blindly shovelling money into Apple's wallet.
 
Perfect, am currently on an unlocked 3g on vodafone, unlocked only to get onto vodafone, it'll be nice to be able to get the newest hardware/software updates without having to worry about basebands and bootloaders and activation servers and software with dumbass names like pwnage.


the questions that remain for me are
1) will I be able to wait until july and get the new iphone 3gs2, or will I cave and get the 3gs? (really want at least 32gigs)
2) will apple now go over o2's head and offer an unlocking service for existing handsets? there would appear to be no reason whatsoever not to now, even if it's just unlocking to just the three approved providers, rather than universal.
 
Perfect! I need to use Vodafone (free phonecalls to family) so this is pretty excellent news to me. Hopefully I can just transfer that cheap plan over to an iPhone contract with them. And hopefully they offer unlimited data too.
 
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