UK iPhone

According to the Telegraph, Orange has secured the rights to distribute the iPhone in the UK. O2 will not lose its contract, just its exclusivity.

Although the contract giving O2 exclusivity was rumoured to be expiring this September, this is the first official confirmation that this will be the case.

This is fantastic news for long-suffering iPhone owners in the UK, currently tied to a network with lousy coverage and painfully slow data speeds. As their contracts come up for renewal, they will be able to choose Orange, whose network is much better.

Ironically I switched from Orange to O2 when I bought my iPhone about a year and a half ago. Now that my contract is up, I’m looking forward to moving back!

UPDATE: Vodafone are getting the iPhone too, although not until next year. So it looks like UK iPhoners are going to be spoilt for choice. With both Voda and Orange having much better 3G networks than O2, the latter will probably say goodbye to its last iPhone subscriber in about two years time, when all those who got the 3GS recently come to the end of their unprecedented two-year contracts!

UPDATE: I signed up with Orange for notification of when I can get an iPhone from them, and they sent an email saying “Not long now.” Let’s hope that’s the truth…

Also I see in the news that O2 “haven’t decided” whether they will unlock iPhones if their customers want to go to Orange or Vodafone. Honestly, I can’t see this as being a big deal. If you upgraded to the 3GS then you are locked into a two-year contract anyway. If you didn’t, you probably want a new phone, especially if like me you have an 8Gb 1st-gen phone. I suppose for some people who are happy with their 3G, this could be bad news, but I can’t see how O2 would benefit from pissing people off even more.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 12:20 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.