Spent some time in the Optus store near work today @ Lunch.

Nice lady in there told me it'll be available on EVERY Optus plan they have, Personal and Business, Pre and Post pay.

Also confirmed that outright purchase is available. In fact she even said that fir the first day or two Full Outright will be the ONLY purchase method.

Anyone who gives a deposit, and cannot purchase due to lack of stock will be refunded (which is obvious).

Said planning and pricing information would be available closer to the date.

We seem to be hearing a lot of weird and varying messages from "Optus people" about what will be the case and what wont. It is worth taking everything one hears with a grain of salt to be honest.

Isn't people who work in Optus stores retail clerks that knows just as little as you and me until the mothership has released things?

The same goes for Apple Store employees by the way (yes, including "geniuses").

i highly doubt she knows what they plan to do. if it were the same as plans options already, they would have let us know already and not have some retail clerk spreading the gospel

I spoke to the staff in the local Apple store (in Japan) and they don't know anything about the iPhone that isn't public either.

I think its reasonable to assume that until Optus and Vodafone announce their official pricing its all just speculation on our part.

For commercial reasons I suspect that they won't want to announce plans too early, but their overseas "brands" might pre-empt them a bit. We will all know before the 11th of next.

True on all accounts, however she was unable to give any HANDSET prices, meaning she couldn't give me any of teh "sign up for 24 months and get it free" or "sign up for 12 months and only pay $99" type price levels.

It makes sense to just offer it on every plan you have, means more people are likely to pick it up. the handset repayment ammounts per plan and minimum contract length are a completely different kettle of fish.

I did think that the "outright only" for first few days was interesting. Might try and confirm at a different optus store next week sometime.

I've just been down to the local greengrocers, he sells Apples, and he's not heard anything either.

+2

Perhaps the outright only is to speed up lines, and when you activate on a plan they'll give you a rebate.

could make sense. also gets lots of phones in hands quickly, as you hand over cash and leave, no signing of contracts. "and whilst you're here, did you want to switch to optus" i'm sure they'll get people signing up to plans anyways as a seperate thing because they, like me, will need/want a plan with data in it.

It has been a very interesting 24 hours with the gizmodo.au's "Optus iPhone plans" which were later proved to be incorrect by Optus themselves. The report initially indicated that there was a very real chance that these plans could be real and in turn causing much disarray in the forums and on the blog article's comments.

Optus possibly testing the waters and monitoring reactions? Hmm...to the brave who contemptuously attacked the status quo and the ridiculous mobile data prices in the great country of Australia, drew a "bulls-eye" on their backs just ready for rebuttal, some people arguing that 1GB of data a month would be plenty regardless of the fact that the 3G iPhone was purposely built for fast wireless data consumption,

The other point some used to justify the pricing was that $30 a month for the 1GB of data was fair purely because: "it's Australia, the telcos have been ripping us off with data costs, and therefore it should be okay for them to continue to do so," purely content with that fact that other countries overseas with similar infrastructure in place are getting unlimited bandwith for the same amount of money. It may just be fact that some in Australia are content with being charged extreme fees for mobile data irregardless of the product and what it represents in its nature. Or Perhaps the romantics who envision great change in mobile data costs across the nation with the birth of this product.

The iPhone is selling on the line "double the speed half the price," it is no not just a smartphone for business people it was sold on the lines of affordability, with Apple's vision having the iphone reaching almost every level of economic level of consumers and to all corners of the earth.

We should be delivering praise to the ones who chose to challenge the status quo, fighting for the consumer and if either Optus or Vodafone are/were reading we will hope they take their reactions into account and not mockingly casting their romantic dreams off into a corner. We shall see in the coming month how the pricing progresses.

Thanks.

Having read your other post on these forums I can see where you are coming from, but you are just going to send this topic down the same alley as the other one ended up in.

Stop speculation on this now or my girlfriends cat gets it.

.....

Yeah I think maybe we can wait until the official plan info is released before we start a nice bitching thread.
Although that does question what the point of this thread is until then.