Earlier we bought you news that Orange and T-Mobile had announced their pricing for the iPhone 5. Well now O2 are getting in on the act and have posted up some prices of their own, things aren’t looking too cheap over on the blue side of the fence either.
They are yet to let slip how much you will have to pay for the handsets but the cheapest contract comes in at £26 a month and will score you unlimited minutes and texts with 1GB of data. You can bet that the phone wont be cheap at that price. Things escalate up to £46 a month for what (we can only assume) is the plan with a free/cheap iPhone 5. These plans are all 24 month contracts on the O2 ‘On & On’ plan. A standard tariff stands you in at the wallet destroyingly high £63 a month.
It’s also worth mentioning the problems you may have getting the most out of your device on O2. As stated by Leigh the other day, the UK iPhone 5 only supports the LTE network that EE have bought up (lucky break hey), so your only hope to use your iPhone 5 with 4G currently is to get it with EE or Three who have a slice of the pie and will be launching next year.
Source – O2
Even when O2 do start to roll out 4G LTE they will not be able to support this phone, the frequency bands that O2 will use will not match up with the UK iPhone 5.
That’s the situation currently…but anything could happen. 🙂
I am just leaving it open the possibility that they strike up a deal with EE much like Three did.
However unlikely that is.
‘I am just leaving it open the possibility that they strike up a deal with EE much like Three did’Hahaha are you on drugs?
…however unlikely that is… 🙂
🙂 Nice to be optimistic but unfortunately for this iteration of the IPhone anything will not include O2 or Vodafone.
The iPhone 5 Model A1429 destined for the UK will support 3 4G LTE frequency bands:
Band 1 (2100 MHz) Band 3 (1800 MHz) Band 5 (850 MHz)
Band 1 (2100 MHz) is currently used for 3G and will not be reallocated to 4G by either Vodafone or O2 for a very very long time, if ever.
EE have all the UK spectrum in the Band 3 block, some of which they have sold to Three with the restriction that they can’t use it commercially until the end of 2013.
Band 5 will not be used in the UK.
So if you want to use 4G LTE on your iPhone 5 in the UK you have a choice of using EE now or waiting over a year to use Three. You will never be able to use the current iPhone 5 on Vodafone or O2 as it currently stands.
Its going to be fascinating to see what EEs 4G speeds actually are, especially as they are marketing it as 8mbs!! I get that on Three now! I guess I would get higher on T-Mobile if they removed the speed cap – another worry with EE, given their track record.
As I don’t live in one of the cities in the initial roll out of EE, I wouldn’t get 4G till the same time as Three will be doing it anyway, so definitely better staying put.
I’m curious as to Vodafone’s silence at the moment though – O2 have been scrabbling to advance their strategy, and making that public to try and keep people from deserting, but Vodafone have been awfully quiet…
As is always the case network rollouts will concentrate on population coverage so major cities and towns will be covered first as they are easy wins. After that comes the pain to roll out the network to the rest of the population (well nearer to 98% in most cases). EE have said that they will have 98% UK Population coverage by the end of 2014.
I doubt that Three will match EE’s UK coverage at the point that they start to use their Band 3 (1800 MHz) allocation at the end of 2013. It’s likely to be well into 2015 before all the networks can offer near parity in coverage.
Yeah I know the facts, I was just saying…I’m leaving it open. I can’t imagine Telefonica would just roll over and die so you know, anything could happen.
So if you know the facts why are you not stating them in the article ?
This for version of the iPhone 5 4G LTE will not work on O2.
Anyone getting an upgrade or new iPhone 5 will not be able to use 4G LTE on their phone with O2 now or most likely ever in the future.
The only ‘anything’ that is likely to resolve that from O2’s 4G LTE plans is that Apple make another version of this phone available in the future that is compatible with their allocated frequency Bands.
Because it’s already stated elsewhere in it’s own article on the website, I’ll just be repeating myself. I’ve amended the article to link to it though…
Cool, just trying to make sure that no-one upgrades / buys an iPhone 5 without full knowledge of the facts.