I know so many people (including my mother!) were surprised I did not get a jeebusPhone the day they were released. I thought about it but the main thing holding me back were the plans, the physical availability in Hicksville, I mean Cairns, and the network availability in this backwater tropical paradise.

In telecommunications in rural and regional Australia, monopoly is spelt T-E-L-S-T-R-A. When Vodafone received their first iPhone at work I searched for this blog and it took forever to load. Of course they don’t have access to 3G technology yet up here and browsing is at dial up speeds. Bugger that for a joke! Optus sold out of the phones early on with preference given to Optus customers so I missed out.

And heck, we all know technology changes rather quickly so the idea of signing up to a 24 month plan does not really appeal with a new jeebusPhone likely to be released in 12 months time.

So the plan was to save (I know a hard concept for me to fathom, but one I have learnt a lot about and am grasping rather well) and buy one outright and then insert my SIM card and go from there.

That was until today! I went into one of the Telstra licenced shops after hearing they were selling pre-paid phones. The poor girl didn’t know a lot about the phone and gave it to me to try and could not really point out any of the features of benefits (mental note if she applies for a job when I am interviewing!) so I pretended not to know much either. Then someone else came along and showed me YouTube videos of English Premier League Soccer. Can’t say that sold it to me, but still!

So there were none in stock but my name has been added to a list and they hope to have more next week. I did mention that I would probably pre-pay and was told that I would then miss out on the free wireless hotspots. After visiting Canberra and discovering that these are $12/hour this was a thing to consider, especially as they are at many McDonalds in the country, including food courts at shopping centres.

So I then do the dumb blonde, ‘But I think I have a few months left on my current contract.’ This is when it got interesting! I was told that as I had signed up on one plan and increased it to another plan after a few months, then if I do need to pay it out I only need to pay out the amount for which I signed my contract for. Then I was told that I may not have to pay it out as it is a little under 3 months until it runs out, but they would have to see.

So I get thinking! I know I will keep this iPhone for 12 months. I could pay the $836 (or whatever it is!) for a 16gb jeebusPhone and then extra for calls and data or I could make the system work for me. So now I can pay $399 upfront and $30/month. Of course that would not be enough for calls or data, but I will realise this after a few days and ring them and tell them I need to increase my plan! After 12 months I have to pay $360. So I get all the benefits of the iPhone, it is cheaper than a pre-pay and I can increase it to around my current spend. I am actually thinking I will just drop my current plan back a bit and add more data. Hey! I can even pay $289 upfront on the $40/month plan and then keep it for 13 months at the same cost.

Why anyone would consider signing up for 24 months on a $100 if they cannot use it as a tax deduction is almost beyond me. I do think I have found an answer though that will suit me. And it feels like I am roting the system too so that makes it even sweeter!

Tags: iPhone, jeebusPhone, Telstra

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 10:31 pm and is filed under Stuff, weird and/or interesting. 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.