The Ludicrously of the UK iPhone Data Plans:
UPDATE: Charile from the Amateur Photography Blog has submitted the story to digg if you liked it please digg the story!
It’s just too damn expensive. Not only price wise, you just don’t get bang for your buck here. Especially in the UK, we are forced to pay outrageous rates for phones, not necessarily just the iPhone but all UK phones. But for this case I’ll just compare prices.
UK iPhone Price: $540 (for all the UK prices I just doubled to make the US approximate)
US iPhone Price: $400
So why do we have to pay an extra $140? Sure we have to pay VAT but that accounts for only 17.5% of the handset’s price!
UK iPhone Data Plan Price: $70 $90 $110
US iPhone Data Plan Price: $60 $80 $100
Well there isn’t much to say about the pricing apart from what you can obviously see. We have to pay an extra $10 per plan, but it gets worse because in exchange for the extra $10 we have to pay we get less.
UK iPhone Minutes: 200 600 1200 (paired respectively to prices)
US iPhone Minutes: 450 900 1350
Why the hell do we have to pay more to get less than half the amount of minutes then the US in one case, luckily for some of the more minute needier users the iPhone minutes do get slightly better - but not by much. Let the madness continue when we look at the amount of texts that you are allowed.
UK iPhone Texts: 200 500 500
US iPhone Texts: 200 200 200
So when you first look at this then you may think - this is where they extra $10 may make sense to some people on the high end, and it did to me until I found this: “For $10 more per month, you can upgrade to 1500 SMS messages” So then, lets look at a revised text plan when now all the prices are the same:
UK iPhone Texts: 200 500 500
US IPhone Texts: 1500 1500 1500
Not so even now is it?
After looking and comparing these prices I just don’t see how i could live with myself when buying one of these, knowing just how much I payed for it and how I’m being cheated by both Apple and O2.
What do you think about the text, minutes and monetary differences? Leave a comment or use the contact from to tell us.
Photo Credit: Niall Kennedy
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Ha, this is quite crazy, but to be honest people are still willing. I think the main problem is when you are comparing with the current rate of exchange, but even still it is pretty darn crazy!! Great post
December 21st, 2007 at 1:50 pmCharlie - http://www.theapblog.com/
Good comparisons I know what you mean everything costs more in the UK!! Why?? it drives me crazy
December 21st, 2007 at 2:34 pmThe number of texts is the sole reason I didn’t get an official UK iPhone tariff and am instead using a hacked iPhone with my old £25pcm tariff. For which I get 200mins and 500texts, and for £7.50 a month more I can get the “unlimited” data bolt on, though I have to sacrifice 100texts which is something I’d be willing to do. If the £35pcm tariff had matched the minutes/texts I get currently I would have upgraded it without thinking twice, instead they’ve lost my custom and I plan on running a hacked iPhone until at least the 3G iPhone, maybe longer.
December 21st, 2007 at 2:50 pmI’m not getting an iPhone solely because of the £35 p/month contract way too expensive for me!
December 23rd, 2007 at 11:56 am