Earlier this week saw the launch of a new mobile virtual network operator, Black + White. This is a virtual network running on the Vodafone network. The market this operator is going after are prepaid customers, and getting them on a monthly bill. One thing that makes them different from the other players, one one of the good things they have to offer to the table is no contracts. You can cancel at anytime, and if you notify them 30 days in advance there is no disconnection fee.

As a prepaid user myself, like many of my friends are, for us this is in no way appealings. Some of the reasons we are on prepaid are because we can only spend what we have so there is no debt. We only pay for what we use so we are no wasting money on minutes that would go wasted. It’s really cheap and convenient and we are not tied down to a contract of any sort. We are the low users, don’t really call much and don’t text much either, or if we only text, for $10, we get a considerable amount of texts that usually last.

The base plan on B+W is $30, and for that you get $0.60/m calls and 600 texts per month. That’s $30 and your calling on top of that. If you compare that to prepaid on Telecom or Vodafone, you would have to make 70 minutes worth of voice calls for to costs to be equal. And on that point, if a prepaid customer really does that many minutes on calling per month, they should probably be on a plan of some description. In comparison, for $30 on Vodafone, you get 600 texts, 30 minutes and 1 BestMate. You are stuck on a 12 month contract, but the disconnection fee is very little on this plan that you might as well pay for it than extra for the minutes on B+W.

The other plans are more on par with the current offerings of Vodafone. The only real difference in that you are not tied down to a 12 or 24 month contract. I wouldn’t know how many prepaid customers pay over $60 a month on there phone, but if they do, they should probably be on a plan that offers them a better deal. The only reason I can see that a person doing this wouldn’t get onto a plan is the contract period, but even then the savings would probably be able to pay for any disconnection fee or plan changing fee if one occurred. If ones phone usage fluctuates a bit through the year, then I could see them jumping onto this.

And seeing as the Vodafone plans and B+W plans are quite comparable, I don’t see anyone jumping ship. If you are already locked into a Vodafone plan, playing the disconnection fee and going onto B+W isn’t going to gain you anything, just maybe make you look a bit silly. If you are already out of your contract period, then there is really no reason to switch because if something better came along, you can already easily jump ship.

I don’t know much about this but from what I see, I don’t see this really taking off. Its a nice alternative to what is now on offer but the only thing they really bring to the table is no contract terms. As for marketing towards prepaid customers, I don’t know how many users would actually benefit from going onto a plan with them. I was thinking about switching to them before I knew the plans because I thought they might have something that could appeal to me. All I spend is $10 a month on Vodafone for 2000 texts to other Vodafone mobiles (Peppery in other words.) I would like a plan that can give me at least 500 to any mobile in New Zealand for around the same price I pay currently. Unfortunately only Telecom offer this on prepaid, but I can’t use my iPhone with them (yet.)

Last Friday afternoon, a package arrived to my home. In this, contained Peppery’s old iPhone. I wasn’t that eager to open it and start playing with it, so I eventually got round to having a look, and taking pictures of the re-unboxing. The first thing you notice about the iPhone, is that the box is gorgeous! Then when you get inside, you have in front of you, a shiny device. You wouldn’t know the device is a phone, if it wasn’t called the iPhone.

Now that I have had a play with it for a week, you would think I’d have something to say about it. Yes, I do, but the thing is, everything has already been said, over the past year of its release. The iPhone is an amazing device. It does everything well. I could go into detail about what I love about this phone, but go Google “iPhone Reviews” and pretty much everything is covered in there.

I could go on and get into specifics, but I don’t want to, I don’t need to. If you haven’t already experienced an iPhone, you are really missing out on something. This device offers so much, and every iPhone owner wouldn’t be disappointed by their investment. I got this for a more than reasonable price and I absolutely love this phone. I’m sorry if you expected a review or something, but you really have to use this product, instead of reading about all of it’s features. Now I’m going off to play with it, my precious!

…for now.

Yesterday at 10am, Vodafone New Zealand announce their plans for the new Apple iPhone they are releasing on the 11th of July. We had been waiting for weeks to get this information and a couple of days before launch, they finally gave it to us. I can see why they waited till the last minute (look at what happened in Canada.) The prices are really expensive for the average mobile user and New Zealanders were not pleased at all with what Vodafone had to offer.

At 10am, on the dot, the Vodafone New Zealand site was hit by many users that wanted to see the plan. But to everyones surprise, the site went down immediately due to the huge amount of traffic. You would think Vodafone would have foreseen this happening and done something to prevent it, but no, they were pretty useless so we had to get the information from other sources until the Vodafone site was back up, which was over an hour later.

Anyway, the price of the iPhone plans start at $80 and go right up to $250 with 1GB of data. This is insane. From the tables below, you can see the full details of the plans as well as the total cost of ownership over the 2 year contract period. The most expensive plan costs $6000 over 2 years. You also have to option to get the phone by itself for $1100 to use on a YouChoose plan.

The plans are pathetic and the prices of them are outrageous, especially when compared to the rest of the world. Vodafone New Zealand is doing the exact same thing Rogers in Canada are doing, taking advantage of the monopoly. In saying that, New Zealands mobile costs are expensive, even before the iPhone, so when you look at it like that and compare the iPhone plans to the current plans, you get a reasonable deal, in New Zealand.

I hope something happens soon to lower mobile prices in New Zealand, not just for the iPhone, but in general. This will probably never happen, especially since there is only one GSM carrier and two in total. With little competition, there is no reason, or incentive to lower prices. I wanted to get an iPhone from Vodafone, but it doesn’t look like I will be able to. I will still get an iPhone somehow, sometime soon, you mark my words!

This morning, at 5:00 am New Zealand time, the main event of the Worldwide Developers Conference took place. This is when Steve Jobs, Apple CEO presents his Keynote. I set my alarm for 4:00 am so I could get up and have plenty of time to do stuff before the keynote, but I ended up sleeping through it and getting up at 5:10 am. At this point, I quickly hopped out of bed to get my laptop and I brought it into bed with me and loaded up many sites so I could see the live happenings, with pictures, of the keynote event.

The whole internet knew what the main parts of the keynote were going to be about, the 3G iPhone, and 3rd Party Applications, as well as the possibility of OS X 10.6. And they were pretty much spot on. It started with a little bit about the next version of OS X but then they moved on and talked a lot about 3rd party applications coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch. At this stage, I was happy I didn’t get up earlier or else I would have been waiting a long time for nothing. I didn’t miss much and there was not much to it. Some developers showed off their apps and games that will be coming to the App Store when it launches.

Towards the end of the keynote, this is when the moment everyone was waiting for came, the announcement of the 3G iPhone. It is basically the same as the original iPhone. The new features are the 3G capabilities, GPS, plastic backing, flushed headphone jack, thinner edges and better battery life. And the price $199 and $299 USD for the 8 and 16 GB versions. This is with a 2-year contract with AT&T. The phone is going to be launching in 22 countries, including Australia and New Zealand on July 11th.

I want this device a lot! And after I watch the video version of the keynote, I am going to want to 100 times more. Reading about it and looking as some pictures of it makes me excited but hearing about it from the Steve Jobs and seeing it on video is going to increase the hype for me by an infinite amount. The only issue I had, was that I was not prepared to get this phone on a contract with Vodafone, but later on in a press release, they announced that it would be available on prepaid and contract plans.

Now this phone is going to be quite expensive in New Zealand. To get an idea of the price it will cost, double the US price and add about 25% on to it, which would make the iPhone cost probably around $500 to $650 NZD, and I assume that is with a 2 year contract with Vodafone. The prepaid version, I would say yu are looking about about $1,000 and $1,200. That is way too much! I am not willing to pay anywhere near that amount, especially for a cellphone I will hardly use as a cellphone.

Since that is the case, I would be better off with an iPod Touch. Although I would really love an iPhone because I don’t carry around a cellphone and an iPod + iPhone would be the idea device and pocket companion for me. At this stage, I would be happy to obtain a original iPhone. I don’t particularly need the 3G and GPS features so a simple iPhone would still be more than ideal for me. I might think about looking for a second hand iPhone but I still like the idea of having the iPhone 3G. We will see how this plays out.