Does that make the UK...
...the first country to have the iPhone on two competing networks?
France Telecom's Orange is to start selling the iPhone to UK subscribers later this year. The company has yet to tell us the date, or pricing plans. But it did issue a short statement which confirmed an agreement with Apple to, "bring iPhone 3G and 3GS to Orange UK customers later this year. Orange globally now offers iPhone …
Orange - pah!
Good luck getting ANY 3G data coverage on Orange at all. One of the reasons why I actually went for an iPhone in the end was that of all the networks, O2 seems to have the best coverage (I was on Orange before with a variety of Nokia and HTC handsets for over 10 years).
Commence the flaming!
giggidy.
I've been saying this would happen all month, it was clear that was the sole purpose of the t-mobile merger, and now we have what we wanted. score one for the orange under-dogs. Now we just wait and see whether they're still going to carry crap tarrifs or if they will do some creative accounting.
So it was exclusive on O2 and now it isn't and Orange have it as well as O2? Does this mean that Vodafone might pick it up as well - or is it exclusive with O2 and Orange now? That might stop the marketing phone calls from Vodafone with HTC magic is better than the iphone and Samsung Jet is better than the iphone....
I wonder what exactly Orange agreed with Apple? As they already cell the iPhone in other countries did they just agree with Apple to let the sell in the UK ? Or did they (Apple) really want to end UK exclusivity as a pilot to ending AT&T's in the US.
I wonder how pissed Apple are at O2, and how the O2 execs are now feeling after this announcement by Orange
I was just wondering how many minutes and texts you get from O2 for your £35 per month, but I was thwarted by O2's website being out of commission … http://www.o2.co.uk/ redirects to http://www.o2.co.uk/assets2/errors/maintenance.html which reads “Sorry, this area of o2.co.uk isn't currently available.”
That'll stop anybody comparing O2's iPhone tariffs with Orabile's.
For £5 you get 150MB of data to consume over a 3 month period. If you don't talk and don't go mad for data then it's a darn good deal. In my case once the 150MB is consumed I'll happily let it chew through the £5 at 30p/MB and then top up again.
Only downside is having to mess with jailbreaks - one day the mobile industry will figure out that we don't want locked-in phones!
Irrespective of how you feel about Orange's coverage, customer service, etc, this is brilliant news. Anything that introduces competition into the iphone market has to be a good thing. You never know, maybe the price will come down...
Like Peter Wilkin, I have to wonder what O2 did wrong to piss off Apple enough. Or perhaps it's just the end of the exclusivity agreement. Either way, good times :)
I've had a play with an orange branded one, here is what it's like
1) The 4 icon dock at the bottom has been removed, it is replace with an orange band
2) Instead of icons being 4x4, they are 3x4
3) On the left is the orange menu, very like the one on the p990, it is unremoveable un changeable. I to the contacts book, the calander, sms messages, the camera and the orange webportal.
4) This side menu appears on all app pages, and the lock screen
5) This orange menu consumes 36mb of ram , and 24% of system resources , constantly -even in lock screen mode
6) Due to the customised nature of the os, regular apple patches don't work, you have to wait for custom orange updates.
What are you complainging about? they've done this for every other phone they sell so why not the iphone?
I've been with Orange for 10 years now, and despite the tendency of my monthly bills to creep upwards by small amounts each month until my yearly "re-adjust my tarrif and sent me the most expensive phone you do for free", I've generally found them very good.
I bought an iPhone from the Apple store and have been using it on Orange for the last 18 months now - first a 3G, then a 3GS. Coverage and data speeds are excellent, and I pay £27 a month for 'dolphin 25' (200 cross network minutes), unlimted texts and 5 gigs of data. Of which I use about 70mb a month.
Can't complain about the price, can't complain about the coverage.
Paw - not sure where you are, I'm on orange and get blanket HSPDA access in London and out to Essex. At worst I might get plain ol' 3G. Even at Reading festival I was getting 3G and good speeds, with all my o2 iPhone chums complaining of slow network access. Probably because 10,000 other people there had iPhones on o2, but hey ho.
Jeffrey - they're generally quite good about not doing that with smartphones, my Hero's completely untouched apart from a splash screen on load. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've owned several non-smartphones with Orange and where that menu is existant, it's also easy to disable.
Anyway, moving swiftly on, this move = good, no matter what network it was. O2 are far too comfortable with the iPhone, and have even been using their iPhone tariffs on their other smartphones, such as the Pre. Now they might actually have to be competitive on pricing.
Maybe this will mean O2 will adjust their attitude. Been trying to buy my wife an iPhone for the last 3 weeks and every O2 store (and carphone warehouse) we go to is out of stock - annoyingly the attitude is:
'no we don't have any, don't know when we will have any, won't reserve one, won't call you when they are in or in fact care that you want to join our network and pay us lots of money. We're a monoply supplier so could spit in your eye and you'd still have to beg us to let you have one'
Been with Orange for 9 years - b0ll0cks to O2 now!
LOL, I was only joking, but it is based on truth,
my last phone on orange was a p990, and their menu did eat most of the system resources, and you could not disable it, drove me mad, until I got a phone shop to hack the firmware to remove it. Also, orange usually released their patches for the p990 several monthe after sonyericcson, and towards the end, they didn't even bother with sony's later patches.
It was the same story with the wifes samsung slider phone.
But hey, maybe they've changed that in the year since I left.
....with O2, will we be able to get our phone unlocked to use with the Orange offering?
I bet O2 are feeling a bit foolish now about not letting iPhone 3G owners upgrade to the 3GS early... would have been happy to enter into a new 18 month contract at that point, which would have locked me into O2 until December 2010. Now, I'm less than chuffed with O2, and look - my contract is up in December 2009 and suddenly there is a new kid on the block!
I left Orange to move to O2 to get an original iPhone. Will be interesting to see what the competition results in..... and, more importantly, who gets the new iPhone next June?
For consumers.
However, I expect that when Orange start selling the iPhone then rather than undercutting O2 prices I reckon that they will do one of 3 things:
"investigate the economics" and determine that the prices charged by O2 are the best possible given the prevailing market forces and therefore charge the same,
Deliver a completely different set of minutes/texts/services which will make direct comparison pretty much impossible or
Charge massively different between the handset and the monthly rentals which will work out pretty much the same over 2 years as O2.
O2's data network should improve over time though. (and Orange's foul up I expect).
"One of the reasons why I actually went for an iPhone in the end was that of all the networks, O2 seems to have the best coverage"
Where were you when OFCOM spent millions (probably) on compiling this then http://www.ofcom.org.uk/radiocomms/ifi/licensing/classes/broadband/cellular/3g/maps/3gmaps/coverage_maps.pdf
You should have saved them the money and just told them that O2 have the best network... oh, except of course what you're saying is bollocks as O2 officially have the lowest coverage in the UK, with Orange 2nd only to Three.
Orange's Data network can't even cope with their Blackberry service right now. The t-mobile merge won't come soon enough for them to be able to avoid some serious crashing in the new year.
The most likely option is that Orange/Apple (or Fruit Salad as they should be known) will cut the prices (O2 at the same time) and also promote and push other Apple products.
It's just giving you a choice of which network is going to extort money from you to fund their overpaid CEO's. Nice phone though...
"(He's just taken out a new contract with his 3GS with O2, despite not liking their service)."
As O2 are online, if he has purchased the phone he has 7 days from the date of delivery to return it (distance selling regulations).
I don't think this will introduce competition at all though, Orange will sell the phone at the same price over the same contract length, for the same tariff, all it will do is give another provider of the same phone so Orange will cut down on their other mobile phones (cause everyone wants an iphone... ) leading to *less* competition, at least phone wise.
They are not a fit home for Smartphones, largely due to their hilariously ripoff data roaming plans.
Don't want to pay the hideous data roaming charges? Well, you can buy 10Mb extra for about a tenner... but you can only buy one, and they won't tell you when it runs out. Going somewhere like Moscow? The only "bundles" are 50Mb+ MONTHLY - no one-off bundles available at all.
I'm tied into my contract at the moment, but I'll be gone from Orange before I next leave the country. I would have actually paid more, and happily, if I'd been able to use google maps abroad rather than being forced to turn off data roaming on my Android handset.
I've had exactly the same experience on Orange with an LG Renoir
- they've installed a whole bunch of demos in the 'my applications' folder which you can't delete (and always appear above the ones you've installed);
- they've deliberately crippled Google Maps so that it doesn't work with the GPS (in a an attempt to make you pay for their mapping service ... which won't actually work on the phone)
- and they've put six favourite links in the browser which you can't delete or move and always appear at the top of the favourites list
- you have to be pretty techie to be able to change the home page from Orange world)
- they have only just released the latest firmware pathc - 9 months after LG released the base version.
Thank god my contract expires in November.
I agree this is good news for everyone. I think all things being equal O2 will keep me as I will switch to SIMplicity at £20/mo. when my contract is up in January using the PAYG iPhone 3GS I bought on launch day (yes it works out as cheaper, if you don't care about visual voicemail), and I also have their broadband; it'd be £60pa more expensive if I didn't have a phone.
But it keeps O2 on their toes, and reinforces to me their stupidity in not locking in all those would-be upgraders for the 3GS; the 3G people's contracts will roll off in January, and they'll drop nicely into a competitive market. I can only assume they've been busy negotiating and hoped in the summer that they would retain exclusivity, as otherwise it's remarkably stupid.
People did point this out in June, of course, when the contract nazis were going on about how unreasonable it was for iPhone owners to expect some deal: they could have locked in their most price-insensitive customers for at least 18 months. Some will have done it anyway, through clenched teeth. Some will have done what I did and split out the phone from the contract, counting the days. And some will have just been p'd off, and will now be delighted. Well, congratulations O2, you won that battle. Pity about the war though.