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The UK may have a quicker overall rollout of faster mobile network services than previously thought. Mobile carriers Everything Everywhere, O2, Vodafone, and Three have stopped their legal threats, and have joined together to create a company specifically to aid in deploying LTE services in the 800MHz band by clearing it of TV signals.
In a comparison of the iPhone contracts of 27 cellphone operators in 21 countries, UK carrier O2 was a far better deal than AT&T in the US, while Swisscom (Switzerland) had the least expensive outlay (albeit while offering voice calls and SMS 'separately'). setteB.IT analyzed the offerings of the 27 carriers, comparing overall costs of the (mostly) two-year contracts, along with the various limitations of data usage, visual voicemail and wi-fi access. Swisscom was the least expensive, at €540, but it listed voice calls and SMS as additional charges. Italy took the prize as most expensive, with a two-year contract costing €1615. Italy's offer does allow a healthy 600MB of data traffic per month, where most of the 27 contracts limited data to 100MB per month.
Apple will likely allow carriers to subsidize the sales of the iPhone, but will lose a portion of the monthly revenue, a new report claims. Supporting previous reports of an expected carrier subsidy in the UK, The Financial Times says that the iPhone is set to be sold at significantly lower prices in both the US and Western Europe -- perhaps as much as $200 lower than the price of the current iPhone (available for $399 in the US). The move, the report claims, is a "tacit acknowledgement by the US technology company that its previous sales strategy was not sustainable," although may have been a necessary for Apple to hit its self-created 10 million iPhone sales target for the calendar year, the report claims.
Apple's iPhone is set to make a big splash in India. A new report says that the rollout of the iPhone in India is set to be the largest, anywhere in the world -- through both Vodafone (previously announced) and Airtel mobile carriers. Citing industry sources, Riyaz.net says that Apple's iPhones will be sold through about 250,000 Vodafone and Airtel retail outlets including franchisee-owned shops. "This rollout would be mammoth when compared to iPhones being available only in about 7,000 AT&T outlets in the US apart from the Apple Stores," the report noted. With the launch of the new 3G iPhone expected next month (likely at WWDC), Apple is already expanding the number of countries in which the iPhone will be available, including Australia (in an non-exclusive arrangement) as well as Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Asia, Egypt, New Zealand, and South Africa via a pre-announced Vodaphone deal.
With the highly anticipated 3G iPhone release expected next month, a test from ComputerWorld shows AT&T's 3G data network is faster than Sprint's and Verizon's. The magazine test, published on Tuesday, summarized the 3G data networks from each cellular network provider that currently offers the high-speed data service in the US, which can be up to three times faster than the EDGE network. The author used a Lenovo ThinkPad X300 and outfitted it with a cellular data network cards from AT&T (LaptopConnect), Sprint (Mobile Broadband) and Verizon (BroadBandAccess). Each was timed for establishing a connection, peak and average download speeds, average upload speeds, the time required to load each vendor's web page and the effect each had on the X300's battery life. All testing took place in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Unfortunately, T-Mobile's 3G network could not yet be included in the test.
