I’m a definite believe that the best camera is the one you have with you.
Joe Nixon
Posts tagged iphone
O2’s spin on its iPhone tariff data changes
O2 claims in its News Centre that:
Based on current usage patterns, 97% of O2 smartphone customers would not need to buy additional data allowances, as the lowest bundle (500MB) provides at least 2.5 times the average O2 customer’s current use.
Which makes it sound like it doesn’t really affect many people, but what they don’t say though is how much data the average iPhone user goes through each month. According to a study released earlier this year, iPhone users use 5 times as much data as BackBerry users, suggesting O2’s stats aren’t as reassuring to iPhone users as it seems they’d have you think.
My thoughts on O2s new iPhone tariffs
O2’s just announced new tariffs for the iPhone 4, and unless you spend £40/month (on an 18month plan) you only get 500MB of data a month. Even spending £40/month, you only get 750MB of data a month. What’s more, they’ve not made the tariffs cheaper, or increased the number of calls or texts you get for each level of their price plans.
I don’t consider myself a particularly heavy data user, so I was actually looking forward to any measures taken to reduce the amount heavy users download to reduce network congestion. However, I typically download about 600MB a month. I could probably cut this down to 500MB, but I don’t particularly want to worry about how much data I’m using every time I use my iPhone. Even if I paid extra to get 750MB a month, I’d still be worried about how much I used in case I was in danger of going above that cap. What makes me more annoyed though, so that I hardly ever make any calls, and don’t particularly send that many texts either - if I didn’t want an iPhone, I could less than half my monthly bill by going on a low-usage tariff with no included data. Before this change I considered it worth it to get my iPhone subsidised and get the data, but now it’s so heavily restricted I’m not sure it’s worth it.
Presumably I won’t have to change tariff to unless I get the new iPhone, but I don’t think it’s a good move by O2 either way. If it wasn’t for their brilliant broadband offering I’d be looking to a competitor already (of course, that’s why they make it so good, to try to keep you from switching), but it’s only something like £5 a month more if you’re not an O2 customer, so it could be worth switching either way.
What do you think? Fair game to bring down network congestion levels, or an unjustified price-hike in disguise?
