Slashdot Mirror
O2 Offered iPhone Contract in UK
davidmcg writes "There has been speculation on who will provide the service for iPhone in the UK. Now, the answer has been provided. It seems that O2 has been offered the contract to provide telephony services in the UK for the iPhone. It seems that the iPhone should be available in the UK in time for Christmas. O2 have refused to confirm or deny these reports, so is it yet another unconfirmed iPhone rumor or is it fact? We can only wait to find out."
When I finally decided to filter news from the Apple section to avoid "iPhone" news. You come and put it in the "hardware" section? C'mon!
"O2 Offered iPhone Contract in UK"
OR
"O2 Offered iPhone Contract in UK - Mobile phone operator O2 is reported to have won the sought-after deal to sell Apple's iPhone in the UK."
First, the first line seems to imply different things, and secondly, they weren't offered it, apparently they were the winning competitor practically bidding for the contract. I'm so tired of misleading summaries, its not a long article, its shouldn't be hard to summarise *waits for someone to compaign about the article's "Girth"*
I live in Eastern Europe and the presence of Apple here is basically nill.
There isn't a single Apple store here. There are 3rd party distributors which sell Apple hardware/software and that's about it. With the kind of deals iPhone is after (tightly integrating the iPhone functionality with a specific provider), I see a big chunk of the world simply denied access to the iPhone (with the exception of illegally imported and hacked units I guess..)
If O2 does have the contract, you know they will keep quiet about it until they are given permission to talk.
Let's all ignore the issue until Apple announces its European partners. Sheesh.
Just an uninformed theory, but I think Apple would need to go 3G with the iPhone if they want to really succeed in the Euro market. Most Americans have never had the exposure to get addicted to a fast net connection on a cell phone, so going with EDGE is grumble-worthy but not a deal breaker for the US mass market. Europeans, on the other hand, are 3G fanatics from what I understand.
Why can't Apple just sell an unlocked phone and really help change the market? Is it the visual voicemail app that needs operator support? Is Apple going to negotiate contracts in every country? What a mess.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
From the summary:
It seems that the iPhone should be available in the UK in time for Christmas. O2 have refused to confirm or deny these reports, so is it yet another unconfirmed iPhone rumor or is it fact?
Well, how about you RTFA that you yourself linked to, buddy?
1. "Press reports said that O2 is set to sign an exclusive contract shortly and should have the new phones on sale in time for Christmas."
2. "However a spokesman for O2's owner, Spain's Telefonica, said that a deal had not been signed."
Translation: a deal is close, almost on the verge of being done but not yet completed. So, yes, for now, it's an unconfirmed rumour. When all parties have signed on the dotted line, then it will be fact.
Really, how can a story that questions itself make it as a frontpage article?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Given the limited nature of American 3G networks, the whole iPhone and EDGE thing can be (to some extent) explained away. But considering how widespread 3G is in Europe, I'd hope Apple has a 3G-ified version of iPhone ready for them. The lack of 3G in the phone, IMHO, is one of the more critical mistakes that Apple has made, especially in introducing such an obviously media-heavy device.
an iPhone story is posted on Slashdot, God kills a kitten. Damn, that's a lotta dead cats.
So... a heavily DRMed phone which you can't run your own applications on, even thou it is fully capable, which also forces you to use a phone provider apple chooses for you? How is this NOT an anti-trust case ? Apple was slapped in Europe for the way iTunes locked people to the iPod already. Are they literarely asking for the same thing to happen with the iPhone? Customers should be free to switch provider if the one they are with turns out to suck, and if it isn't already it certainly ought to be law that youa re not allowed to lock phones to a particular company.
PS: Taking bets on weather there will be some form of "region codes" implemented in this one.
Jobs said he's not going to do 3G until they can get 3G chips that use less power. Who wants to bet Apple is arranging to have exactly that available by the fall?
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
How will apple get around EU laws force the phone to be unlocked?
The iPhone covers all GSM bands and should work adequately on any system. Not every feature works on my phone and that's the norm. How much do GSM providers pay for these things? IPhones work fine over here and if they do cost $1000 each as a friend in the industry told me, that should be an option: Free to choose the provider you want.
Paying full price for a crippled GSM phone with no 3rd-party app support, no real-world bluetooth support, no 3G capability, and having to lock yourself into a contract is the height of shortsightedness and stupidity. I don't care how amazing the multitouch or the screen is, I damn well expect to either 1) do anything I can normally do on a GSM phone after spending the full retail price, or 2) have the up-front price slashed if I'm being forced into a contract.
And not only that, but it doesn't use standard sim cards, so I couldn't go to another GSM carrier after the contract is up. Don't like AT&T and want to use T-mobile or Rogers or a European carrier after the contract's up? Travelling outside of AT&T's coverage area and want to avoid the extortionate roaming charges by using a local sim card? Sorry, no can do. $600 paperweight.
Apple's impressed me in the past with their greater willingness to stick to standards than other companies (OSX BSD layer, KHTML-based webkit), and I was planning on getting a macbook when leopard is released, but if this is the way the Apple is going to play I want no part of it. If they sell it unlocked with the ability to use standard sims, I might change my tune. Until then, fuck'em. No new macbook, no new ipod. I'll give my cash to Dell and Archos instead.
Since this is bound to raise questions about will it have 3G type. I thought I should ask a related question. I guess the EU have some sort of FCC equivalent that asserts that devices with radio comply to standards. When would apple have to provide them with an iPhone with a 3G chip, for it to make the before end of 2007 deadline. Are those tests public, i.e. would they have to tell us that they are conducting tests on the iPhone?
John Carmack fan, browsing at +5 since 1999.
Why would they? They want to share in the revenue from month to month..not just a one time hardware purchase. Think of it more like a pay-for-play model. Apple gets to make 50% off each iphone, then get a certain % of the monthly service fee that the iphones will bring the operators. Normally these phones are heavily subsidized by the operators in america, this is not true at all in EU which is why you can get an unlocked phone. This phone is not subsidized by US carriers, which is why they can afford to give apple a piece of the monthly on top of the cost of the phone. Win Win for apple.
I'm surprised nobody has commented on O2 as a phone provider. I've been a customer of O2, Vodafone and one2one/T-Mobile and I'd have to say O2 were easily the worst of the three in my experience. I think if the rumours turn out to be true I would be put off the iPhone by having to have an O2 contract.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
The Times Online is reporting that O2 have already won the contract ("O2 has beaten its rivals to win the exclusive UK rights to offer Apple's iPhone"), BBC News is saying that it is "reported to have won the sought-after deal". So the BBC is speculating whereas The Times is claiming it to be fact. I don't know who to believe.
If you believe all the articles you read then apparently O2 have denying winning the contract, being quoted as saying "they're just stories without any truth to them". That sounds like a pretty negative statement for a company who is apprently just being hush-hush about being in such a privileged position.
O2 do not have very good 3G coverage in the UK, it seems almost a no-brainer that Vodafone would've won the contract since their infrastructure is superior. There's no EDGE in the UK, so the UK iPhone either has to be 3G, or work over GPRS... the latter doesn't bear thinking about (think Youtube vids downloaded at 3-4KBps).
The smart money is still on Vodafone to win the contract in my opinion, despite these reports, and the UK (maybe Euro) iPhone having 3G support.
My iPhone loses it's charge in less than one day of moderate use, which I define as checking, reading and replying to e-mail several times a day, 10 minutes of phone calls, and a 45 minute commute watching podcasts. If that's it's power usage for so called 2.5G, they've got a way to go wrt power management before 3G will work.
I reckon that a lot of it though is unoptimized power management on a 1.0 product.
I said that the limitations of this artificially-crippled cellphone are unacceptable to me at that price point, and that people who buy it in its' current incarnation are shortsighted and stupid.
I would've thought it would've ended up on a more international carrier like vodaphone or something. Here in italy a ton of people seem to have their really snazzy cellphones so I'm sure they'd just gobble this shit up.
We came,we saw, we kicked it's ass!
I'm with o2 (although not for much longer). They suck to high heaven.
Could have been tempted, but not on that network.
Modding it +5 insightful only demonstrates your extreme gullibility.
O2 were the first operator to release PPC/PDA phones in the UK (to my knowledge), in the two local stores, I have the employees know about the XDA's back to front. When I went looking for one they went through my wants and needs before narrowing down which XDA they would recommend. Places like Orange and TMobile don't make a deal about their PDA phones their usually mixed in with the more expensive phones, but O2 do. I'm curious why O2 would take on the iPhone, unlike orange their not losing customers in droves, 3 could do with it as they need market share. Unless the iPhone drops its price substantially I can see the people in the O2 shops recommending an XDA Orbit (thin, light) with a 2GB memory card over the iPhone.
I'm with O2, fortunately out of my mandatory lock-in period. I'm not interested in an iPhone, but as soon as I can get my grubby paws on a Nokia E90, I'm jumping ship - probably to T-Mobile. Why? O2's GPRS data charges are extortionate.
You get 100KB for free a month. Last month I had to use my phone for data and I managed to suck down 14441KB. They charged me £27.97 for the privilege. That sucks. ~30 quid for 15MB. I pay less than that for my broadband connection a month and that's capped at 40GB a month.
Mobile data in the UK is rubbish.
/DM
They'll charge a "reasonable fee" for the unlocking when you're out of contract. This will be a non-trivial amount of money, and your contract may well lock you in for upto 2 years anyway so they don't *have* to SIM-unlock it during that period to protect their revenue. When unlocked, your iPhone will function on a competitors GSM network, but will probably lack operator-specific iPhone enhancements such as Visual Voicemail.
Bottom-line - it'll make little difference to them. They're almost certainly getting a sweet deal from the operators they choose, who will sell them like hotcakes, and they're getting money on the hardware. Sure, there'll be some churn, but it's not going to exactly worry them...
...mobile internet is not going to see _widespread_ consumer adoption until the prices come down. They are currently set at a ridiculous rate only "business" is willing to pay. It's really mainly a data transfer pricing issue at this stage, the web is perfectly usable on many modern mobile gadgets. This is definately going to take off, but only when the prices come down, and right now the operators are afraid of losing the revenue from the overpriced services they are offering to businesses (broadband was in the exact same position a few years ago.)
The UK is still (only just .....) part of the EU, where regulations mandate handset portability across networks. Even if you buy an iPhone connected to O2, you will have to be able to transfer it to any other telco with whose networks it is physically compatible. That means at least Vodafone (who are also using the 900MHz band) and possibly Orange and T-Mobile, if the RF section also does 1800MHz.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
There has not yet been anyone to figure out how to SIM unlock the phone. All those stores you are talking about just unlock the phone to use as a glorified PDA.
Why is it that the device must be tied to a particular service. Forgive me but I've just never understood this?
Somehow, I don't think I'll be camping outside my local Apple store anytime soon...