Very Likely CC but you have not taken into account the included texts or the fact that data is included for 12 months only, not 18 with PAYG. So you need to add 60 quid to compare like with like.

Another option ..

I have a friend who works for the bbc. They (the BBC) like many other corporate customers (including macdonalds i believe) get a 30% discount which they can pass on to friends and family. So my £30 contract costs me just over £20 a month. It makes it much more palatable.

So ask around your family and friends and see if anyone gets a corporate deal with o2 which they can pass to you.

HTH

Didge

One thing I don't understand is why I get paper bills from O2 each month.

I've mentioned it on the phone to them in the past and they have assured me they are not sending them. Strange how some fraudster sends me a copy of my bill on the 6th of each month

Does anybody else get such bills from them? I've just got my May bill in this afternoon's post.

Peter.

I get paper bills but they're rather pointless as I can't use them for tax purposes.

I have downgraded my iPhone tariff though, that's £60 O2 won't be getting. Sour grapes I feel.

They're exactly the same as O2's costs when using a USB 3G dongle. So you're essentially getting the same deal as everyone else, which to me seems pretty fair. It's expensive but then mobile broadband in the UK is. You'd have been frighteningly naive to assume O2 would allow people to use the iPhone's 'unlimited' internet tariff for full mobile broadband. The iPhone being, well, a phone and some of the OS features inherently limits the amount of useful traffic you can put through it - you can't bit-torrent for example, nor currently stream Spotify or the like. And there's no point downloading huge files from the web to an iPhone because you can't save them or get them off it later. if they let people do those things using a PC via their iphone, O2's 3G network would quickly get swamped.

They're basically treating a tethered iPhone the same as any other tethered phone or a 3G dongle. I don't see there's any rip off of iPhone customers going on here, unless you start from the assumption you should get something you weren't promised when you signed the contract for free at a later date. If you actually think that was ever likely to happen, I suggest you get a coherent adult to sign contracts on your behalf in future.

What does intrigue me is how it actually works. According to the fairly limited docs as yet available, you don't need any additional software if you have a recent version of iTunes installed. That suggest they've hidden network drivers somewhere inside iTunes without telling people when they were installing it. That's kind of not on, IMO.

Jon

No offence Jon, they already have a data contract, why should they pay extra to use the data contract they already have, just because the 'phone happens to be connected to another device? Data is data...

I'm going off topic a little. But... Ohhh shiiiny!!

Someone did the sums for me.

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/news.ph ... 3g-s.phtml

I am definitely in the market for one now.

Some time ago Mrs Cat bought a Nokia 6600. Never a day goes by without her cursing it. I guess quality is always remembered long after price has been forgotten.

I'll have to go dig out my contact paperwork but I think it's highly unlikely the terms of the contract are that vague. The contract most likely specifies what devices can be connected to the service both directy or indirectly, if only to limit O2's support liability.

Plus, of course, the iPhone 'unlimited' contract is in fact anything but. IIRC the point where O2 start nagging you about the data you're using is very low, much lower than the 3GB/month limit on the tethering contract.

The way I see it is this - people were happy to sign the contract getting the service that was available at the time. They made what they obviously thought was a fair deal. Tethering support is an extra feature that wasn't there at the time, yet they still signed the contract. To now effectively claim they can unilaterally change the contact to include tethering data charges (which you get charged extra for on every other mobile phone package O2 provide) is simply not fair. if O2 were trying to unilaterally change the terms by say charging for something that the contract said was thrown in free, people would be up in arms. I know some people think big corporations are by definition fair game and that the 'The Man' deserves to be kicked at every point - I'm not one of those people. In this case, there's no reason why O2 should provide what is essentially a new service to the users for free simply because they already are providing another similar service for free. That's not the way the real world works.

Jon

I've been using it for a couple of months now, there's some nice changes, there are more to come in the form of the app store with the extra of extra API's available.

Not saying that the data plan should be free but it should be comparable to the competition's tariffs with mobile tethering.

I would be very curious if you take out tethering they will allow you to view all the non-3G content restricted on the iPhone, like the SlingPlayer and iPlayer.

It's comparable (in fact identical) to O2's standard tethering deal with every phone other than the iPhone up to this point. if you think another company will do you a better deal then most of them will throw in a USB dongle for free, so there's nothing stopping you getting that and just not using your iPhone for mobile broadband. There's no law against paying two different companies for similar services.


I don't get what you mean - if you're getting the data through the tethering plan, you're getting it via 3G anyway. And IIRC iPlayer has never been restricted to wlan only - it's just a web page after all. I don't know if the just released slingplayer iPhone app is wlan only, as I haven't looked at it due to not having a slingbox.


Jon

On the iPhone iPlayer is restricted to WiFi only you can't do play anything over 3G. This is becasue it will use too much od O2's bandwidth. And the slingPlayer is no different.

Anyone else seen O2's update for pay monthly customers. Jokers.
Instead of option 3 I think I'll go for option 2, sell my current one on ebay and tell o2 to stuff their contract when it expires.

you can sell your existing iphone hasle free with envirophone and get reasonable cash for it.
http://www.envirofone.com/trade/?search=Apple%20iphone

Or get £100 more on fleabay

Is that all they're selling for now?