Danny Gorog04 August 2008, 2:50 PM
UPDATED | Want to buy an iPhone 3G? We've gone through all the plans from all the telcos to find the best of the best.
Page 6 - Three iPhone 3G plans in detail
It would be fair to say that the fourth mobile network in Australia -- 3 -- is desperate. For some reason, Apple is refusing to let 3 sell the iPhone, which prompted the telco to lead a public petition to Apple to allow it to sell the iPhone. For whatever reason, Apple isn't budging.
3 is so desperate that it will pay you $300 to go and buy an iPhone outright from Optus and then walk down the road to the 3 store and sign up on a 3 plan. While its plans are definitely the best value money can buy for voice and data (assuming you're in a 3 coverage zone), if you move out of the 3 zone, or even hit a 3 blackspot within a coverage zone (and there are many), you'll roam onto Telstra's network and be stung hard for usage -- $1.65 per megabyte. To us, buying a phone from another provider and bringing it to them for use just sounds like too much hard work. This inconvenience might be worth it if 3 improved its off-network data roaming rates, but until then, our advice is to stay away.