RIM had a lunch launching the BlackBerry Bold 9700 a couple of weeks ago, but I held off sharing because you couldn’t actually buy the phone yet. Well now you can as Telstra, Optus and Vodafone have all launched the handset.
Optus have the handset available on a $79 Blackberry Cap plan over 24 months, which includes up to $300 worth of calls and text, and “unlimited” Blackberry email and internet.
Telstra customers looking for the new BlackBerry can grab the handset for $999 upfront, or $0 on an $85 Mobile PLUS plan, or on a variety of enterprise or fleet plans.
Finally, potential Vodafone customers can grab the handset from next week, according to David Flynn at APC, on either a $79 cap plan (with $550 worth of calls and text, plus unlimited Blackberry email and web) or a $99 unlimited talk and text plan that has 1.5GB of data, including use as a tethered modem.
It’s a very nice phone – if I was an email hound, it would almost certainly be my handset of choice at the moment…