Orange have finally announced their 3G pricing. It's not as severe as I'd feared, but neither is it as cheap as I'd hoped. For light users it's really no cheaper than GPRS. So far as I can tell, it goes (monthly): £10-7Mb-£2/Mb over (not worth piddling around with); £20-65Mb-£1.50 (decent deal - cheaper than GPRS except for the over-bundle charge, which is a nasty sting); £45-400Mb-£1 (rather good if you need it); £75-1Gbish-nada (for the genuinely insane who should just get an office, already).
Back of the envelope, I'd have saved £50 or so going this route over these last six months. But my net access speed would have been dramatically better, which would have been worth a lot. The remaining hassle is that the Ericssony z1010 is, frankly, massive and ugly. What I really want is a small clamshell that does 3G data and standard voice, and pretty much nothing else - certainly, none of that video conference junk. I'll be interested to see what deals are around when my O2 contract is up.
Reposted press release here; Orange PDF here.
Remember that 3G is quicker, so you’ll probably consume more.
As for handsets, I think only the old Nokia 7600 doesn’t have video - most operators are demanding it.
Several companies have smaller 3G silver-flips (sigh) in the pipeline. Samsung and LG were showing some at Cebit earlier in the year.
I’ll just wait for the Orange trial and free handset that comes with it ;-)