Apples and Oranges
According to The Guardian this morning, O2′s exclusive contract with Apple will soon be at an end.
For iPhone / O2 customers, this has to be good news. We’ve been paying a premium for two years (the inevitability of a monopoly position undoubtedly) and a little competition will certainly stir things up.
The upgrade path for those wishing to move to the new 3GS was prohibitively priced and O2′s data network looks to have struggled with the strain which iPhone customers have placed upon it.
Despite Orange claiming to have the biggest 3G coverage in the UK (though this doesn’t seem to be reflected in Ofcom’s recently published maps, which appear to illustrate Hutchison 3G showing greater coverage), I will be unable to threaten O2 with a switch to Orange as coverage is so poor at my postcode. That said, I anticipate some aggressive switching campaigns from Orange at the launch of its iPhone offering and O2 will be forced to respond.
At this point, Orange has only uploaded a register your interest page at its website. I would be interested to know how many hits that page receives over the next few weeks.
September 29th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Let’s hope that to even the odds a little that Orange and T-Mobile owners decide that the proposed deal to merge the two networks is sealed in November, as that should give a little more meat to the bones of the Orange coverage situation and make the iPhone battle for customers a little more interesting….Mmm wonder how the regulator will react…?
September 29th, 2009 at 9:50 am
True enough Martyn. You’ll be pleased to know that it looks like Vodafone have also joined the party. Even more competition for O2. » » Read more at telegraph.co.uk
October 1st, 2009 at 11:25 am
This is absolutely fabulous news for all iPhone customers!!
No longer will we have to accept the very limited tariffs that O2 offer to iPhone customers on the basis that we cant go anywhere else for the handset. Furthermore, the frequent data network outages reported in the past few months have made me question whether the O2 network is equipped to deal with such a data hungry device and its abundance of data hungry applications.
Had the O2 launch of the iPhone 3GS not been such a slap in the face of existing iPhone 3G customers, I would have probably remained with O2 for a considerable length of time. But asking me, and all other iPhone 3G customers, to pay around £600 to cancel existing contracts if we wanted the new 3GS device really was a shortsighted move by O2. Most of these iPhone 3G customers were absolutely furious at this move by O2, and all O2 had to do was extend our existing contracts by 18 months in order to keep our business and keep us happy.
Well I’m delighted to say that all of the customers that O2 stuck two fingers up to with the poorly managed launch of the 3GS can reciprocate in January when their contracts come up for renewal.
Now lets see how easy it is to get my mobile number ported to Orange…..
October 12th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
cheers, i like the style of your blog so will be sure to visit again!