Jul 18 2008
What data plans will Vodafone offer for the iPhone 3G
UPDATE: Official pricing has now been released, read here for more info:
I’ll take a stab in the dark and say that Vodafone will offer an unlimited iPhone data package for $99 per month.
The reason for this is that Vodafone already offer a 3GB package for $69.99 on contract. There is no way that any iPhone user will be able to use 3GB in a month – that’s because there are currently no apps that need that much traffic in a month. Even the mobile iTunes store only works on WiFi at the moment. This may change with the iPhone 2.0 as new apps are released, but my understanding is that the SDK is very limiting as to what you can do over the 3G network, as Apple don’t want users to run out of battery too quick. Even so, 100MB per day is a lot of traffic for a mobile device.
Also, the current iPhone can’t be used as a modem (over Bluetooth or cable) and I haven’t seen anything that says the new version will be able to act as modem either. So there’s no way that you could connect your iPhone to your computer and download gigs of content through your unlimited plan.
So if Vodafone are smart (read: sneaky) they’ll know this, and will offer an unlimited plan at a premium over the 3GB plan. So customers will think that they are getting an awesome plan when 99% won’t ever come close to 1GB, let alone the 3GB plan that’s currently on offer.
(I posted this as a comment on Rod’s blog, but thought it was worthy of it’s own post here too.)