Only option for any plan, Optus. fuck the rest.

Not sure if this was put up already, but it was an easy enough read for me, without making my headspin with numbers.

What are the best iPhone plans in Australia? | NEWS.com.au

Yes, I know. That's why I was so surprised he said it. The guy seemed pretty clued up and sure of what he was saying. But I'm aware there is a lot of misinformation floating around so we'll just have to wait and see.

I am pretty much the same as you. Except my work dosent have wifi access. i dont download just surf. But I travel for about 2hrs a day total on public transport and i am pretty much constanly on it then. I dont access my emails that much and i generally go to forums and sporting sites. I prob watch 2-3 youtube videos a mnth. On my N95 8gig with three I use about 350-500mb a month. On the iphone with optus i will be going up to 750mb. Hope that helps

Thanks mate, answers a lot of questions I had as well.

OK... I really need some help to decide here. I've saved up $1000 specifically for the iPhone (16GB). But I'm fretting over these options:

1) Buy the phone outright ($849+80=$929) and then choose the plan that works best for me ($59 cap or plan).
2) Buy the phone outright on the 24 month $59 cap or plan with no handset repayments. (Is this even possible on Optus?)
3) Get the 24 month $59 cap or plan (likely plan), pay $66 per month and spend my savings on something else fun/useful.

Is option 1 worth spending all the money outright for the freedom to choose even if I'd still be paying $59 per month?

Is there a tangible advantage to 2) over 3)? Peace of mind and less monthly payments?

Is there a history of letting users upgrade their handset in exchange for a new locked in contract in Australia like they did on AT&T in the US? If so, the freedom of option 1 is less attractive to me.

Decisions, decisions...

Just a note, as I see there's quite a few questions across the threads along the lines of "how much data should I expect to use?".

The correct answer is, of course "how long is a piece of string?", or possibly "YMMV", but whilst reading daringfireball.net, I noted that John Gruber mentions his data used last month and the type of usage that lead to it. A quick Google search turns up some more indications of "how much might be enough"...

Now, before the howls of derision start, a few things to be aware of:
- Obviously, total data usage = 3G/EDGE/GPRS usage + WiFi usage; and
- Generally there's no indication from these guys how much access they have to WiFi; so
- It's not clear if anyone in particular is surfing like a madman, but sitting next to an (AU example) Optus store with free WiFi, with only a tiny fraction of his usage being on a train on EDGE; to some extent it's a moot point in that my understanding is that the iPhone tracks only the non-WiFi data.
- The sample data is from a professional tech blogger (Gruber), and people who have registered at either the apple.com forums or the ars technica forums, so we're probably talking about data usage data that's from fellow geeks/nerds/technically minded types, hence I'll take a punt that the data is probably representative.

To summarise for those with short attention spans:
- Average usage is roughly = 160Mb/month (discarding the lowest and the highest outliers)
- Average usage is roughly = 234Mb/month (including the lowest outlier and that huge 1400Mb high outlier)
- Lowest reported usage is = ~50Mb/month
- Highest reported usage is = ~1.4Gb/month

The data...

Gruber on Daring Fireball reckons he used under 300Mb last month:
On this relatively recent thread at apple.com, the most anyone used was under 700Mb, doing these sort of things:
Finally (I ran out of puff and had to do some work), this thread at Ars Technica has this to say:
However this thread has some speculation that includes a few calculations for the inveterate YouTuber:
So, YMMV, how long is a piece of string!

If anyone with a first-gen iPhone wants to add their own usage, please do so and we'll see if this half-arsed (note spelling please, we're Australians, an ass is a donkey) analysis has any validity.

Cheers,

Hi Guys, im considering just buying the 16gb pre paid than either staying with optus on teh turbo caps until end of august (for unlimited data and cancel out the $80 unlock) than moving over to virgin to the $25 prepaid 10c per min calls / 10c text plan with the 1GB 3g data for $15 ontop.

no contracts, all paid for
$40 a month for what i can work out superior call rates and better data.

possible? / thoughts?

Sounds like a good theory to me.

Nice post Cods - I'll whack it in the first post.

No worries. I was doing the sums anyway, so I figured it was nice to share.

@ decryption

May I suggest that on the first post it might be easier on the eye to
a. cut out all the data from after "The data..." in toto, and
b. replace it in that first post with a link to my post if anyone is actually interested in the background info?

I wrote it, and it looks nasty even to my own eyes!

Cheers,

Thanks for the tip. Really not happy about leaked Telstra prices if true. I was going with them because of the free wifi hotspots but not sure now.

Sounds like my option a). Here's hoping that they will have a white 16GB available on pre-paid tomorrow. I doubt my chances...

hi guys, those who are also interested in the virgin path. here are some links so you can check it out etc for yourselves.

prepaid calls
Rates – Cheap rates on great value pre-paid & monthly plans

monthly data
Rates – Cheap rates on great value pre-paid & monthly plans

You may even be able to put your virgin sim straight in the iphone without the unlock as virgin uses the optus network (similar to now where you can swap between optus & virgin simcards on other mobiles) though this may not work with the iphone.