Europeans are pretty used to paying through the nose for usage charges, whether it be by-the-minute charges for local calls in the landline days of yore, or per-KB charges for wireless data. The up side is that there are usually some pretty sweet prices on phones, since wireless companies know they can make it up on the back end, but for heavy users things can get expensive fast. And unfortunately, the glorious promises of "unlimited" data usage tacked onto iPhone plans offered by T-Mobile, O2 and Orange in their respective iPhone-exclusive markets aren't quite the revolution we might've hoped for. T-Mobile just posted its rate plans for the
November 9th iPhone launch, though it quickly pulled them from the site. Eagle-eyed observers grabbed a screenshot of the rates (pictured), but what's notable is the fine print: depending on which plan you select -- M, L or XL -- you're limited to 200MB, 1GB or 5GB of data, after which your data speeds are limited to 64Kbps, instead of EDGE's traditional 220Kbps max. O2, whose rates have been up
since day one, has a slightly vaguer "fair usage policy" that gives O2 the right to slap you with extra charges or change your rate plan if you exceed 200MB of use, though they claim this rarely happens. Details on
Orange's rate plans for the iPhone haven't emerged yet, but Orange France has historically some of the priciest unlimited data rates, and has a standing policy to just go ahead and slap per-KB charges once the limit is crossed. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
[Thanks, Patrick]
posted October 29th 2007 10:26AM
A cell phone company screwing consumers? Never thought I'd see the day...
It's all data. What I use the bandwidth for is up to me.
If I have to, I'll get a clearwire card and tablet PC running open wengo instead of using a phone. I can do more with that anyway, even if it is a tad bulkier.
Screw voice-dedicated wireless. Just give me the internet.
I just wouldn't enter into an agreement with a company that tells shitfaced lies.
In the big picture it's probably better to wait for some sort of true revolution in mobile communications/computing. The iPhone is still just a phone.
And limited by the phone companies. Damn you mobile phone providers! =(
Blame Apple for taking the path that encouraged the mobile provider to maximise their profit like bandits.
On the plus side, as long as Apple stay this wildly successful they'll survive any potential failure products they might come up with in the future. Only 15 years ago an underselling product was like a deathblow.
good thing att doesn't pull this crap for iphone users.
or does it?
Instead of unlimited bandwidth, AT&T send out infinite phone bills.
Who would even waste their time downloading 5GB of data on EDGE? Can you even tether an iPhone?
No, you cannot tether an iPhone. At 220Kbps max you would have to use the full edge speed for just under 53 hours. Remember, that is full speed for 52 hours.
If you can manage to use 5GB of edge speed bandwidth in a month you have some serious issues.
Hmm, let's see.. If you use 220kbit/sec for 4 hours a day for 20 typical work days in a month, oops, you ran out of bandwidth at 12 days.
5G of data, 256,000 bps = 1 day, 22 hrs, 36 mins, 12 secs
Yes, 256k vs 220k. Close enough. :)
5GB is a lot of data for browsing on something like the iPhone. You shouldn't be downloading files on the scale of megabytes via edge, and what you do download would be web pages and so on that you spend time reading before loading another. If you're using some crazy AJAX'd web 2.0 app that Apple apparently has a hardon for, then, however, it's feasible, since you have to keep pulling web pages to update your page. Gmail, for example, has to keep requesting updates from the server to keep your page up to date, and if you're running meebo or so on, then more packets, more data, more usage. It's hard to imagine someone actively requesting that much data, but thanks to web 2.0, it can happen.
I don't even hit the 5GB cap on the net at home - and I use it for everything from personal communications (e-mail, Skype MSN etc), through to research for uni.You'd have to look at some VERY intensive websites (*cough*pr0n*cough*) to make that limit.
Oh, and 4 hours a day surfing on your phone, bit much innit? Unless you have a 2 hour commute.
Wouldn't then, calling these plans unlimited be false advertising. Theres just no recourse for consumers these days, the big companies will lie and screw you while your government runs to the bank to cash that check from ATT.
Well, it is only false advertising in a way. The data plan is in fact unlimited. The critical thing that is not mentioned here is the download speed. You can still download 2GB of data with the "Complete M" subscription. The 'only drawback' is that after 200 MB of data you are not able to use the full speed of the EDGE-network but only download with 64 Kb/s. That could be communicated more clearly (I'm all in favor for that option), but it is not like you can't download anything else after the 200 MB.
How is this even news?
In Engadget, iPhone news does you!
Are these per day or per month ?
I regularly use about 200mb/month on my iPhone, and I wouldn't consider myself a heavy user at all. I probably browse for about 30-60 minutes a day and I often use wifi. I can see how these plans could get very expensive.
Aside from the throtteling: € 49,- is roughly USD 70,- and you get:
100min, 40 SMS and a throttled data plan.
I think this is a phone company's way of showing a customer the finger... Crazy!
Suddenly I'm glad AT&T got the iPhone- let them bear the complaints about pricing. If T-Mobile got the iPhone in the States with rates like this the iPhone would have been a flop.
That's the problem with using current currency conversion rates to compare the price of services in different countries. 6 years ago 50EUR would have equaled only 43USD. Just because the Dollar has tanked since then, that doesn't mean costs and wages in Europe (which are demoninated in EUR) have suddenly gone down 50% also. The USD is not the center of the world.
And you get (real) unlimited WLan-traffic at over 8000 T-Mobile HotSpots
Absolutely. And all those NOMAD subscribers in Canada, and Clearwire, and eventually me with my open WiFi/WiMax connection, etc.
Wireless internet is going to hit the cell phone industry like a train. I will be elated when it does. I will be the one shoveling the coal into the engine (old train, a long time coming :)
locked iphone with unlimited data.....or unlocked iphone with limited data.....
Is it even possible to download 200 mb off of edge? The way EDGE is for me, I would get sick of it after a few minutes and go find a wireless connection.
And its similar to that here in Canada, although finally - two of the three cellcos are offering 'unlimited' plans with a 'fair use' restriction and no VoIP or servers rule.
Unfortunately, it's the two CDMA carriers. Rogers (the only GSM carrier and thus, the only one that can carry the iPhone) still has no 'unlimited' plan of any sort. That'll probably change soon enough now that the competition has them.
Good news (kinda) for the Canadians waiting for an iPhone.
no VoIP? I'm out. Don't they get it? That's the POINT.
I can't understand people over cell lines. I need 144KHz at 128kbps at least. VoIP gives that to me. They don't.
And it's not up to them to say what I put across my connection. I pay for the bandwidth, they piss off. If the telcos won't do it, I'll lug a laptop with a WiMax card and service from the local wireless ISP. Here, that's clearwire.
They give the consumer the finger, the consumer will cut it off. Have no mercy. ethana2@gmail.com
As a US T-Mobile user, and not being too up to date on the iPhone and its capabilities, What are the chances or options for getting a German iPhone working on the US in English, and if thats all hunkey dorey, what would the deal be with firmware updates and the such?
I realize this is barely related to this post, but Im still curous.
Thanks.
That are some old(er) data/voice plan information you got there ... I pay around 40€ a month for unlimited 3G usage with no traffic or time limit when surfing the web using Opera mini, finding a route via Google Maps or streaming some YouTube videos or watching some UMTS TV. The plan also includes free national calls to landlines and other users on my network (voice or video call) as well as free SMS to them ... I only pay extra when I'm texting or making a call to another mobile network.
That's for Vodefone Germany by the way.
I wouldn't say us Euorpeans get screwed on phone plans as unlike in america we don't have to pay to recieve calls. We also get loads of free minutes and texts and data on most plans. And i must say that compared to most (if not all) deals the O2 iPhone is a really bad. But it's exclusive to O2 and it's an Apple product so what do you expect?
when I lived in finland I got paid 2.2cents a minute for incoming calls.
I'm not sure either where engadget is really getting their oppinion of euro prices being bad.
I'd take euro prices over canadian prices ANY day
did you type that wrong or do you really get paid 2.2 cents/minute, from your cell service provider, for incoming calls? If so, how does that work?
@B:
The case dj-kenpo talked about is true. There is a plan in Finland where you are indeed paid for incoming calls. I can't remember the details of the plan anymore, and the plan was only available for subscription for a limited time, but the idea was that you pay slightly more for outgoing calls and SMS, and the incoming minutes are deducted from your plan. So you can't make money off this plan type, but you can talk for free if you mostly receive calls. The ratio was I believe 4:1, so for every 4 minutes that someone called you, you could call 1 minute for free.
I believe the catch was; you only make money off received calls from within the same service provider group (3 operators). So in the end they win anyway, as the person who calls you has to pay for his/her phone calls, right? It's all money in the MSP's pocket.
Being in the networking/ISP industry, I can completely understand them throttling the bandwidth after you have reached a crazy amount of bandwidth.
Bandwidth doesn't grow in tubes you know.
Data rates may be horrendous, but I got much sweeter deals on my tariff and text messages in the UK than I do now I live in the US. Being charged to receive calls and text messages is as backwards as all hell, and while it's slowly disappearing, I can't believe the practice existed in the first place.
I can understand being charged when receiving calls. If caller ID wasn't standard, then that would be a problem... but, charging for incoming text messages, that's just BS and it still happens. At least Sprint and Verizon still do it, as far as I know. It's terrible that they charge a customer 15 cents when they receive a text message. You have the choice of answering an incoming call. You don't have that choice with incoming text messages, so you'll always be charged.
You think Europe's data and voice plans are bad.. just wait till you go over to Russia (or any CIS country, for that matter).. There, it's just terrible!.. Plus, both the phones and service are expensive over there, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.. while it may "look" affordable.. it really isn't.. even for your everyday usage (although, everyone seems to have a cellphone there.. it has got to be that "no incoming charges for anything" line that is attracting a lot of customers). You'd be amazed at the cartel being run there by companies like Vympelkom (a.k.a. "Beeline") or MegaFon.. or even MTS (a Belarussian company that's quite popular in the CIS region). The prices and plans are the same all across the board. The ordinary observer would be, at the very least, confused by the pricing and plan feature breakdown.
this is all much of a muchness... I've had unlimited UMTS data via Three X-Series and with frequent google maps, all personal email, occasional RSS via opera and the occasional 3MusicStore download, I never even come close to their fair usage limits (most i've EVER used is 200mb in a month I think, usually hovers 80-130mb)
Western European phone plans are expensive, however here in Scandinavia the situation is a lot better. In Finland, for instance, we have never had to pay for incoming calls. Caller ID has not even been spoken of, since it has been included in every plan since the inception of GSM. Pay-as-you -go plans are very inexpensive (an example would be a flat price 6,9 euro cents per minute/per SMS plan, no monthly fees). Even pre-paid plans are cheap, starting from 6,9 euro cents per minute/per SMS. As far as I know, we have the best mobile prices in the world. Figures though, we got Nokia. ;)
But also data is cheap; the plan I'm using right now includes 500 mins of calls + 300 SMS for 22,90EUR/month with data only costing 1,50EUR/MB. I could add any of the following plans without an extra subscription: 25MB/month 4EUR, unlimited data (384kbps cap) 9,80EUR/month, unlimited data (1Mbps cap) 19,80EUR/month. I could go on.
We do even have "total" plans that include the phone, calls, SMS, data and so on. For 50 euros (+ the price of the phone of course) you get (and this may sound incredible but it's true):
3000 mins normal phonecalls
3000 mins videocalls
3000 SMS
3000 MMS (multimedia messages: usually used for sending phone-taken photos to someone)
...aaand unlimited data with a 1Mbps cap. GPRS/EDGE/3G.
So all European prices are not bad. The only thing that sucks is you have to subscribe for 2 years, but then that's the case with the iPhone too, no?
"Europeans are pretty used to paying through the nose for usage charges".. WTF!!
Give me my old UK contract anytime compared to T-Mobile USA! In the UK, you don't pay for incoming calls or texts, caller ID is standard plus loads of other stuff classed as 'extras' over here. You can get huge amounts of bundled minutes, unused minutes rollover, phones are cheap (with a contract) and you get the new phones decades before they arrive over here. Call quality is far superior, more reliable, texts arrive instantly etc etc The USA is still in the dark ages compared to Europe.