Having decided to wait for a while before purchasing an iPhone I thought that it might be a good idea to try and get a real understanding of what the Australian telcos are offering. To do this I gathered pricing information from each and then broke it down in terms of included calls, monthly costs, total cost of ownership of the phone and total costs including what I defined as typical usage.
Each carrier has a different approach. Telstra require you to buy the phone upfront at various subsidised prices and then pay each month. Each Telstra plan includes a minimal amount of data. Vodafone allows you to buy the phone upfront or pay each month at various subsidised prices. Amazingly Vodafone has plans for the iPhone that do not include any data at all. Finally Optus requires you to pay for the phone each month at a subsidised cost on the cheaper plans and the phone is free on the more expensive plans.
While Telstra has a model where you pay directly for calls, both Optus and Vodafone offer capped plans where your monthly spend corresponds to a greater value of calls and texts than the direct cost. For example the $59 Optus cap plan includes $350 worth of calls and texts whereas the Telstra $59 plan includes $25 of calls and texts. Optus also offers regular plans with lower call rates, similar to the Telstra plans.
I modelled typical usage on sending 5 texts and making 5 one-minute calls per day. I multiplied the cost for this usage by 30 to represent a month’s usage.
For Optus and Vodafone total cost of ownership was calculated by adding the monthly plan fee to the monthly handset payments and then multiplying this by 24. For Telstra I multiplied the monthly fee by 24 and then added the upfront costs. I didn’t calculate 12 month plans.
I calculated typical total cost of ownership by multiplying the typical monthly usage for each plan by 24. Adding this figure to the total cost of ownership.
Based on my calculations the Optus $49 cap plan is the cheapest way to own an iPhone 3G at $1344 over 24 months for the 8 GB and $1464 over 24 months for the 16 GB. The limited (250 MB) of data on this plan means that the $59 cap plan seems to represent the best value at $1464 for the 8 GB and $1584 for the 16 GB.
Vodafone’s $69 plan is their best value. The total cost of ownership based on typical usage sees the 8 GB at $1845 and the 16 GB at $1965. The paltry 250 MB of data is very limiting and makes it hard to recommend.
Telstra’s offerings are terrible. The cheapest total cost of ownership based on typical usage is the 16 GB iPhone on the $129 plan at $4392. You get the phone for free but it is impossible to recommend any of the Telstra plans. Their $59 plan for the 8 GB will cost $6279 ($191 p/m) based on typical usage and the 16 GB $6399. In addition the phones cost $279 and $399 upfront for the 8 GB and 16 GB respectively.
You can download the summary and the data below.
Just letting you and everyone else know that in response to the charges by Telstra, Vodafone, etc. and their unresponsiveness to new technology, a few Australians are organizing a co-op alternative.
https://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/fauc
Please take a look, and tell everyone you know who’d want lower prices, especially for iPhone data.
Thanks.