David Flynn16 July 2009, 9:48 AM
Mere days after announcing its iPhone pricing, 3 has halved the monthly handset cost across most plans, but the 500MB bonus on the $49 cap has been dropped.
One day away from its launch of the iPhone 3G and 3GS, mobile telco 3 has unexpectedly revised the
plans it announced at the start of this week.
The cost of monthly handset repayments on its 24-month contract plans has been almost halved, and the iPhone 3G (not 3GS) is now available for free on the $49/month cap.
But 3 has scrapped the bonus 500MB previously promised for the iPhone 3GS on the same plan, which boosted the monthly data allowance for those higher-end handsets from a modest 250MB to a meaty 750MB.
The monthly cost, call value and data allowance of the three capped plans remains the same.
The handset costs on the entry-level $39 cap plan, which marries $150 of talk & text with 150MB of data, have been halved. An 8GB iPhone 3G now costs $5 per month, down from $10. The iPhone 3GS (16GB) now costs $10/month, down from $18; the 32GB version of the iPhone 3GS likewise drops from $24/month to $14/month.
This means that 3’s cheapest iPhone plan is now $44/month with the iPhone 3G or $49 with the iPhone 3GS.
An iPhone 3G is now free on the $49 cap plan, whereas it was previously $5 per month. The monthly repayment for the 16GB iPhone 3GS has plummeted from $14 to $5, and for the 16GB iPhone 3GS from $18 to $10.
No doubt 3 hopes to make up the difference by selling customers a top-up data pack, which start at $6 per month for an extra 500MB, or simply collect an extra 50c/MB when users exceed their meagre 250MB data cap.
The premium $79 cap (with $650 of calls and 1GB of data) still offers a choice between a free 8GB iPhone 3G or a 16GB iPhone 3GS – and we still can’t work out why
anyone would choose a previous-gen iPhone with half the storage! – while the monthly cost of the 32GB iPhone 3GS drops from $10 to $5.
For full details, visit
http://www.three.com.au/iphone/pricing.