Valhalla Island

Five days before it’s released, just one of the three initial Australian iPhone carriers has announced full plan details and prices. Since owning a mobile phone Optus has been my carrier and the carrier I planned to use with the iPhone. My experience with phone plans is slim, I’ve used the same pre-paid SIM card and very few phones over the last 5 years.

My current phone and carrier setup is like this. I own my phone outright and I have an Optus SIM card. Each month I buy $30 worth of credit which through Optus’s “turbo charge” program gets me $120 worth of calls and text. A month after adding the credit the remaining balance expires, no doubt a ploy to get pre-paid customers buying credit more regularly. I never come anywhere close to using $120 worth of calls and text a month but I do use over $30, so it’s still a good deal. I enjoy the freedom to make as many calls and write as many messages as I want without fear of using all my credit.

While my phone is internet capable this carrier setup doesn’t allow internet use. I don’t even get caller ID (which might explain my aversion to phone answering). It doesn’t bother me because using my phone sucks, I don’t want to spend time browsing the web or checking email on a device that is unpleasant to operate.

If the right mobile device existed, using the internet and email is certainly something I’d want to do. The iPhone is it.

The first thing to strike me about Optus’s plans is the ridiculous amount of choice. There’s 13 post paid options and then you have to decide on the 8 or 16gb and a 12 or 24 month contract, multiplying the potential options.

I’m only going to talk about the post paid plans because the pre paid have an unrealistic upfront cost and no data at all.

For me the iPhone is about the internet. While calling and texting would no doubt be more enjoyable on the iPhone, any other $100 phone will do a “good enough” job. I’ve never owned an iPod bigger than a shuffle and don’t need one. The internet is it for me — Safari, Mail, NetNewsWire, Twitterific, MarsEdit, Flickr Uploadr — I’d love the ability to use these applications away from a computer and wi-fi connection.

The problem is the insanely limited monthly data allowances. The minimum is 100MB and the maximum, when spending $179 a month, allows only 1GB of data.

While the $19 capped plan includes $50 of calls and 100MB of data the $179 plan includes 30 times the calls with $1500 worth but only 10 times the data which is still equates to a meager 1GB. Not that I’d ever consider paying such a ridiculous amount for just 1GB of data. The much more reasonable $49 and $59 cap plan only provide 250MB and 500MB of data respectively.

The ‘yes’ plans provide a bump in data but provide little call and text credit. My choice is between a plan that provides more calls and text credit than I’ll ever use but a small amount of data or a plan that provides me a little more (but still small amount) of data and perhaps not enough calls or text.

Sure, it’s completely untested just how much data I’ll use in practice each month but that’s beside the point. The killer feature for me is the internet and I want to make use of it unhindered without having to check myself every time I go to watch a YouTube video or upload photos to Flickr. Being reluctant to use the internet on the iPhone for not wanting to waste my data ration is the equivalent of being reluctant to use the internet on a lesser phone because the experience sucks. Either way I’m hesitant.

If AT&T can provide unlimited data on all of it’s plans to 15 times the population of Australia it proves it’s not technologically impossible. I don’t understand why bandwidth is so precious in Australia.

Like I’ve said on Twitter, while I was initially sure I’d get the iPhone soon after being released now I’m not sure. I definitely have no loyalty to Optus, whoever has the best plan will get me, maybe.