Posts Tagged O2
iPhone4S tariff bizarre’ness from O2
Being an O2 iPhone customer I was eager to see what their tariff prices are for the new iPhone4GS
The first thing I noticed is that they are offiering a 12 Month contract – obviously ready for the upgrade debacle when the iPhone5 is launched.
Secondly they are listing the data as a bolt-on which include Tethering and Visual Voicemail – from £3/month for a measly 100MB through £6 to £10/month which includes 1GB of data allowance, Wifi and a paultry 50 MMS’s.
Reading between the lines it looks like you don’t get Visual VM unless you get a data bolt-on “All our data Bolt Ons include Visual Voicemail and Tethering for iPhone.”
It’s when you start to crunch the numbers it becomes interesting, which if I am reading it right has all the tariffs (except the unlimited) are more or less the same when you factor in the cost of the phone. In fact the 1200 minutes tariff is cheapest of them all!
Here’s a little chart that demonstrates what I found.
So if I stick with O2 (which is likely taking a cursory look at Vodafone’s tariffs for the device) I’ll be signing up to the 12month 1200 minutes tariff and saving myself some cash.
Monopoly money
I don’t normally have much of a problem with single source supply. It allows a distributor/seller to specialise and concentrate on the product, however when that exclusivity turns into a monopoly because the product is popular, there is always the danger the supplier will use that monopoly to squeeze their customers’ last shekel from their hands, just because they can.
This is bad for the customer of course but also for the manufacturer because the product gets a bad name which results in reduced sales of ‘it’ and by association the manufacturer’s subsequent products.
Where monopolies are concerned they don’t come much bigger or longer standing than AT&T in the US and O2 in the UK.