Yesterday ZDnet broke the story that Virgin would be launching the iPhone 3G within two weeks, but without any official confirmation, it was stuck into the “rumour” basket.
Today, Giz can happily confirm that Virgin will be launching the iPhone, hopefully as soon as Friday this week (although that’s not confirmed yet). So if you’re planning on getting yourself an iPhone in the next few days, you probably want to wait, especially if you’re a data fiend.
And if, like me, you just bought an iPhone, what you read below the fold is probably going to hurt a little bit…
From our source:
For $70 per month for 24 months, all Virgin iPhone 3G customers will get:
· An 8GB Apple iPhone 3G for $0
· $520 WORTH OF CALLS & TEXTS
· 1GB OF DATA each and every month
· FREE CALLS & TEXT TO VIRGIN MOBILES!
· FREE VOICEMAIL to receive and retrieve in Oz!
· 40¢ Call Rate per 30 seconds w/ 40¢ call connection
· 25¢ Text to others in Australia, 35¢ overseas
For $100 per month, you can get the same plan but increase your data allowance up to 5GB. Yep, 5 Gigs.
Want the 16 Gig version? Then that’ll be $4 extra a month on the Cap 70 plan, but no extra on the Cap 100 plan.
As we mentioned yesterday, Virgin runs on the Optus network, so you get the same coverage as the current best deal, but with a lot more data.
Stocks will be limited, of course, and the phones will be available through Virgin stores and online.
This is the kind of deal I was expecting Vodafone to have. And now that Virgin has the iPhone, how long before 3 gets it, I wonder?