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[PSUs]| Tuesday 18th September 2007 |
As expected O2 will have exclusive network rights. Users will have a choice of three 18-month contracts, costing 35, £45 or £55 a month. All include unlimited data traffic. O2 has also signed a Wi-Fi hotspot roaming deal with The Cloud giving users access to 7,500 hotspots across the UK without the need to login to a hotspot service provider.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that choice of O2 was partly determined by finding the carrier that fitted the Apple ethos.
"We are coming to the UK and we wanted to pick the best carrier for the product," he said at the UK iPhone launch in London. "The one that we felt most comfortable working with is O2. We had a lot of choices to make regarding networks across Europe, and I think we made the right ones."
The phones will be available from Apple and O2 as well as in the Carphone Warehouse shops nationwide. Matthew Key, chief executive of O2 UK, said that with Carphone Warehouse selling the phone, no-one will have to travel
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"We have partnered with Carphone Warehouse so that between our own stores, CPW and Apple's stores, we will have 1,300 outlets for the iPhone nationwide, and everyone in the UK should be within 20 minutes drive of an iPhone retail outlet," he said.
The 18-month contract is shorter than the two years required to get an iPhone in the US and means that the minimum cost of ownership of an iPhone in the UK will be between £900 and £1,260 over the life of the contract - depending on the chosen price plan.
Keys said that O2 has had to make a multi-million pound investment in adding Edge support to its network infrastructure. There will be around 30% coverage by the 9 November launch date with nationwide coverage to follow.
Jobs reiterated that Apple will only add 3G to the iPhone once its heavy power demands have been addressed. He said that the 2.75G Edge network has proved more than satisfactory.
"The Edge network works really well, especially for email as we have seen with the BlackBerry, and surprisingly for Google Maps," he said. "The one thing you do want to go faster is web browsing. So we have opted for Wi-Fi integration rather than cut battery life by integrating 3G support at this stage."
Jobs also announced that the iPhone will be available from Orange in France and T-Mobile in Germany.
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