Not that long after Vodafone broke the price barrier on the iPhone 4S, Virgin have slipped past them to the crown.
The iPhone 4S 16GB is now available on Virgin's $29 Cap, the Post-Paid Big Plan with only $19 in handset payments, bringing your overall monthly cost up to $48 per month. That's $9 cheaper per month than Vodafone's option.
Click here for the best cap plans.
However, Virgin don't stop there. On its own, the $29 Big Plan may not seem like a particularly great one for iPhones. It's a plan for light users, with $450 of included value for texts and calls, and only 250MB of data – which is barely anything, and may ruin some of the fun you can have with an iPhone and ready access to the internet on your phone.
But a new promotion from Virgin is making the pot that much sweeter. If you sign up on a Big Plan before July 1st, Virgin will give you an extra 2GBs per month for the entire duration of your plan.
That means that you'll have 2.25GB of data – more than enough to have fun with your iPhone without having to worry about running into excessive data usage charges once you've gone over your cap.
The extra 2GB and the iPhone 4S is also available on the next Big Plan available, Virgin's $39 Big Plan. The iPhone comes at an extra $15 in handset costs per month, bringing your overall cost up to $54 a month – still cheaper than Vodafone's option!
This plan is a better option if you want to be able to make more calls on your plan, offering $650 worth of included value and, until July 1st, 2.5GB of data.
Let's take a look and compare it to the recent Vodafone plan that offered the iPhone 4S 16GB for $57 per month.
It's a pretty impressive plan, and it stacks up well against Vodafone, making Vodafone look a little less great in comparison! However, the drawback to Virgin may well be the speed. Though they use the Optus network, Virgin use a different AP, which means their cap speed for mobile data usage is slower than someone like Optus – something around 3Mbps might be normal. That's not incredibly slow, but depending upon how good the Virgin/Optus network is in your area, it might be slower and frustrating when you try to use your brand new iPhone and find that even Twitter refuses to load.
Vodafone (1300 106 571) have received a lot of flack in the last few years about their network coverage and the failings thereof. However, they've been pouring money into infrastructure and surfaced with a burst of advertising to promote a newly improved network and customer service, along with some of the best plans and prices available at the moment – Vodafone remain one of the few providers who will give you some great new phones on 12 month contracts.
Vodafone are more likely to be able to give you 5 or 6Mbps on their own network, or around the same as Optus and Optus resellers like Dodo and TPG do in 3G areas. And to back that up, they've installed a new Vodafone Network Guarantee, which gives customers an escape clause if they find that the internet or phone service in their area is less than satisfactory.
If speed is an issue, then, you might pick Vodafone over Virgin. Otherwise, though, the Virgin plans are great, and the only downside is that after July 1st, the iPhone plan will be dramatically less appealing – still a great price for an iPhone, but with no more than 500MB of data possible and heavy excess data rates just waiting for you to overuse your cap.
Until July, though, snap up this deal while it's available! Call Virgin now on 1300 768 103.
The most exciting thing about the emergence of these two competitive plans within such a short space really is that it shows that the iPhone prices are coming down and providers are recognising that it's not just those heavy users who are willing to spend around $80 a month on their phones who want iPhones. It's a sign of support for light users that telcos are finally considering their needs and finding a way to supply the popular iPhone for these customers without either the customer or the company having to pay way more than they can afford.
It's also a hint for something else – the fact that a new iPhone is about to emerge. We can expect the 4S prices to go down even further once the iPhone 5 that is most likely going to come out later this year. That means it's a very good time to hang tight and not get any phone at all – so that you can decide when the new iPhone arrives whether you want to get the brand new one with whatever exciting features Apple will think up next, or whether to pick up an iPhone 4S on some of the discounted plans that will undoubtedly be available soon.
Unfortunately, Virgin isn't going to wait around for that, so you have a decision to make! Oh, it's a hard life when there are this many iPhones (hypothetical or not) floating around on great deals.
If you're still having trouble deciding, feel free to give us a call on 1300 850 518 and we'll be able to help you find the phone and plan that suits you best.