Australian iPhone Pricing And Plans - One Day To Go

There is only one day to go for the release of the iPhone, so today I will devote some time to all the latest rumors and news for the Australian release of the iPhone as it comes in.

Each of the three Australian carriers has been playing cat and mouse with their respective plans and prices with both Optus and Vodafone having released details of their plans by yesterday.

Within hours of Vodafone releasing their plan details online yesterday, they took them back down again, while Telstra has remained completely tight lipped and released nothing.

The only carrier to release both their plans and pricing is Optus.

Here is a wrap of how things stand this morning.

Prices and Plans

With Telstra not having released their plan details at this stage, only Vodafone and Optus can be analysed here.

The best value prepaid plan is Optus’ $50 cap, which comes with 500MB of data per month, plus all Optus users receive free data for the month of July. It’s not all roses though, as call charges can be steep, with charges calculated per minute, not per 30 seconds, which can help to chew through your call times.

The Optus $59 postpaid cap plan may be a better choice. It offers the same 500MB of monthly data and you get the iPhone foe $2 for the 8GB model and $7 for the 16GB model over 24 months.

Vodafone has said it will have similar prepaid offers in the future, but not at time of launch. This is obviously what my friend at Vodafone was meaning on the weekend when he told me to hold off buying an iPhone for a couple of months.

All that is known of Telstra’s pricing at this stag, is that you can get an iPhone on a $30 plan for $279 for the 8GB model or $399 for the 16GB model on a 24-month contract with no extra monthly handset repayments.

Heavy Surfer

If, like me, you were hoping to get a good deal on a large data plan, you are fresh out of luck. None of the carriers is offering anything above 1GB per month.

Once again, Optus has the best value plan at this stage for 1GB of data, with it costing $99 on the postpaid plan and $100 on prepaid.

To get the same deal with Vodafone costs $169 per month.

Unlocking

iPhoneInAustralia.com is reporting that all Aussie iPhones come ‘bricked’ out of the box and that while you can buy them outright and activate on a store version of iTunes, it will lock it into the carriers sim in the phone. In other words, you will be locked into that carrier.

I am not sure if this means your phone would be locked into that carrier indefinitely, but if so, I would expect a fix for this, so should not really be an issue.

So there you have it. I’ll post more details as they come to hand.