Orange has announced it’s pricing plan for the newly launched iPhone, a move that has made it immediately apparent that any price war with O2 is far from the company’s collective minds, with The Guardian calculating that the total difference in price over the course of two years on the two standard contracts will be less than a pound. The contract for the phone also includes a slightly surprising ‘fair usage’ policy that will limit data downloads, a policy that market leading rival O2 does not currently stipulate.
Like O2, the Orange contract for the iPhone will be 18 months in length, and come with an initial outlay for the handset of £184.50 (48 pence cheaper than the O2 contract). The standard monthly bill will be £29.36 (two pence cheaper than the O2 contract), a tiny difference that will make any change of network for price reasons a somewhat pointless exercise.
Orange are clearly wary of the iPhone’s notoriously large bandwidth usage, and have inserted a clause into the iPhone contact the restricts data download usage to 750MB per month, a constraint that’s unlikely to worry the majority of users, but may well affect the most regular of users. Of course, it’s worth considering the iPhone’s WiFi access, which will provide another way around the download restrictions, but considering Orange’s reputation as the strongest 3G network in the UK (and plenty of complaints from O2 iPhone users over the years), the restriction seems slightly ill advised.
Other available tariffs announced by Orange include a 24-month business contract, which will cost £87 for the handset and £30 per month (a significant saving over the course of the two years), or a pay as you go contract on which the handset comes in at a massive £440 (all prices for a 16GB 3GS model). The phone will be available on the Orange network at Orange stores, Carphone Warehouse, Phones4U, HMV and Apple Retail Stores. Those still hoping for the much-anticipated price war, though, will have to pin their hopes on Vodafone’s iPhone launch early next year.
To buy the iPhone on Orange, click here.
