Apple and T-Mobile unveil iPhone rate plans for Germany

AppleInsider · October 29, 2007 6:20PM

Apple and T-Mobile on Monday announced three rate plans for iPhone in Germany, starting at €49 per month for a plan that includes 100 minutes.

All three "iPhone Complete" plans include unlimited data, Visual Voicemail and access to T-Mobile’s more than 8,000 Wi-Fi HotSpots in Germany. iPhone customers can choose the plan that’s right for them based on the amount of voice minutes and SMS text messages they plan to use each month.

A €49 "Complete M" plan will include 100 minutes and 40 SMS messages, while a €69 "Complete L" option will offer 200 minutes and 150 SMS messages. T-Mobile will also offer a "Complete XL" plan for €89, which includes 1000 minutes and 300 text messages. Additional minutes will be billed at €0.39/minute in the Complete L and M plans and €0.29/minute in the XL plan. Additional text messages cost €0.29.

"We’re thrilled to be partnering with T-Mobile and can’t wait to start selling the iPhone in Germany in just a few short weeks," said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Starting at just €49 per month, we think these three rate plans give customers the flexibility to experience all of iPhone’s revolutionary features at affordable and competitive prices."

By the end of 2007, T-Mobile will be the only network operator in Germany to offer EDGE throughout almost its entire GSM network. With 20,000 HotSpots worldwide, T-Mobile is also the biggest Wi-Fi provider in the world. Over 8,000 of those HotSpots are in Germany, where HotSpot users can achieve download speeds of up to 11 megabits per second, the carrier said.

iPhone is scheduled to go on sale on November 9 and will be sold in Germany through Telekom Shops of Deutsche Telekom and the T-Mobile web shop. iPhone requires a new 2-year T-Mobile rate plan and will be available in an 8GB model for €399 including V.A.T. and will work with either a PC or Mac.

iPhone activation will require an Internet connection; an iTunes Store account or a major credit card; the latest version of iTunes available at www.itunes.de and a PC or Mac with a USB 2.0 port and one of the following operating systems: Mac OS X v10.4.10 or later; Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later; or Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Enterprise or Ultimate Edition.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

mdriftmeyer · October 29, 2007 6:30PM

Painful.

fotobahn · October 29, 2007 6:32PM

Since T-Mobile is in many countries. What would happen if one were to use a US T-Mobile SIM?

atomicgarden · October 29, 2007 6:37PM

good luck t-mobile then

these rates are indeed overpriced - with blau - a different german provider, operating in the e-plus network I pay 5 cent /minute when I call a blau number, 15 cent to all other networks (including land line calls) and 10cent per sms...

oh, and it's pay-as-you-go, no contract... hehe, t-mobile are greedy people, yes they are...

commonsense · October 29, 2007 6:55PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fotobahn

Since T-Mobile is in many countries. What would happen if one were to use a US T-Mobile SIM?

It won't work. From a SIM card point of view, each T-Mobile variant is effectively a distinct GSM carrier. I wish it weren't like that; then I could use an "orthodox" iPhone instead of my unlocked one for T-Mobile in the US.

The thing I'm really waiting for is for the firmware of the unlocked edition of France's iPhone (or more specifically, its baseband firmware) to "mysteriously" leak out to the Internet so we can enjoy a legitimate, Apple-originated, unlocked iPhone. :-)

saschke · October 29, 2007 7:21PM

I've seen this coming. This is ridiculous. Happy to be on o2-de with my fully unlocked 1.1.1. iPhone!

thorsten · October 29, 2007 7:23PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

Painful.

Yes absolutly.

I was so looking forward to getting an iPhone.

But with these prices they cna ust forgeet it.

The prices for the plans are actually not so bad, but the prices for minutes and SMS after the included ones are used up are rediculous.

Also no carrying over of minutes, and the throtled EDGE is also really annoying.

Edge is already slow you odn't need ot make it slower!!!

zgerman · October 29, 2007 7:36PM

Quote:

What sort of taxes do people pay on phone service in Europe? Do these prices include the taxes (if any?)

In the US we often pay taxes approaching 20% of the price of the plan. These include federal, state and local (city) taxes. In Chicago area of Illinois I am paying $71.11 for my $59 iPhone plan. (350 minutes, 200 SMS, unlimited data, but NO WiFi "hot-spot" services")

Every price in Germany usually means that all taxes are included. That's why you might see some German tourists counting their money in the supermarket and then whining that the prices of their vegetables were without taxes... in Germany, they would have been able to come to the correct amount (to the single cent) by simply adding the price tags. Maybe you will see something like this around you soon

Cheers.

jeffdm · October 29, 2007 8:23PM

Quote:

What sort of taxes do people pay on phone service in Europe? Do these prices include the taxes (if any?)

In the US we often pay taxes approaching 20% of the price of the plan. These include federal, state and local (city) taxes. In Chicago area of Illinois I am paying $71.11 for my $59 iPhone plan. (350 minutes, 200 SMS, unlimited data, but NO WiFi "hot-spot" services")

Really? I'm paying about 10%, but I don't live in a major metro area.

gsteeno · October 29, 2007 9:54PM

How difficult is Visual Voice to implement? It sounded like it was a lot of work of both Apple's end and Cingular's / ATT's end to make that come together. (At least that's the impression I got from the January keynote with Steve and Stan.) Apple just recently announced T-Mobile as a partner, and it's already Visual Voice ready?! I guess that's impressive.

And Visual Voice, I thought, is an ATT exclusive. How did T-Mobile get it (regardless of country of use)? I would think ATT would be pissed sharing intellectual property.

anantksundaram · October 29, 2007 9:55PM

Hmmm.... I am waiting to hear from all our "we're-oh-so-advanced-and-inexpensive" European brethren to explain how T-Mobile can get away with these prices!

By comparison, I can say that I am getting a great deal from my $60 (= 41.67 euros) ATT iPhone plan: 200 SMS, 450 day+3000 wknd & nite mins, and unlimited data.

Can't wait to hear the entrails of the plans in France and the UK. I have no doubt there are a couple of more surprises waiting to happen!

gsteeno · October 29, 2007 10:19PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tonton

If there's any proprietary technology associated with providing visual voicemail service, it's owned by Apple, not AT&T.

Hmmm....Maybe. But it was clear that V-Voice was a joint collaboration that could not have happened without both parties. I can't see Apple with the "back-end know-how" on the network side to completely own the entire intellectual piece. But, I can see Apple leveraging the iPhone's power with ATT and (strongly) negotiating to share that technology outside the US.

It's still boggles my mind that it was implemented in Deutschland so quickly.

petermac · October 29, 2007 11:50PM

These prices are double what I would be prepared to pay. Buying the phone is not the obstacle, its these rate plans. I think the plans are being prepared in light of what they think Germans will pay, erring on the high side, they can always drop the price, if their post release market research shows it is the plan rates that will kill adoption. Just look at the price of iTunes around the world. There is no level playing field here.

Pete

bluedalmatian · October 30, 2007 1:01AM

why is apple so hell bent on restricting the iphone to these overpriced,locked in contracts? doesnt it want to sell as many hardware units as possible? im a shareholder and i have grave conerns about this

atomicgarden · October 30, 2007 1:09AM

good morning

it's because t-mobile is one of the most expensive providers in germany. they always were - not only are their mobile phone rates overpriced, but their land line calls where hideous until competition started back in 1998. that's what you get with monopolies running any market. there are way cheaper rates out there, most on the e-plus network. i personally would never do the switch to t-mobile, just because this company is still way to influential over here.

cheers,

jan

Quote:

Originally Posted by anantksundaram

Hmmm.... I am waiting to hear from all our "we're-oh-so-advanced-and-inexpensive" European brethren to explain how T-Mobile can get away with these prices!

By comparison, I can say that I am getting a great deal from my $60 (= 41.67 euros) ATT iPhone plan: 200 SMS, 450 day+3000 wknd & nite mins, and unlimited data.

Can't wait to hear the entrails of the plans in France and the UK. I have no doubt there are a couple of more surprises waiting to happen!

julien · October 30, 2007 2:00AM

Okay, they are obviously nuts at T-Mobile Germany!

I'm in neighboring Austria and pay 29 euros per month (taxes included) for 1,000 free minutes into each of the networks I call (1,000 mins. for T-Mobile, 1,000 mins. for Orange, 1,000 mins. for my mailbox, 1,000 mins. for "old style phones etc.). Free email forwarding and 100 SMS messages are also included.

So far, there's no legal way to get an iPhone here though. Still, I really cannot understand how anybody is willing to pay such insane prices as the ones T-Mobile Germany announced

I doubt that the iPhone is going to be successful there this way.

Then again, I never quite understood Apple's strategy with these exclusive partnerships. That was the only way of getting a share of the ongoing customer payments, I guess. Too bad :-(

thorsten · October 30, 2007 3:07AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AtomicGarden

good morning

it's because t-mobile is one of the most expensive providers in germany. they always were - not only are their mobile phone rates overpriced, but their land line calls where hideous until competition started back in 1998. that's what you get with monopolies running any market. there are way cheaper rates out there, most on the e-plus network. i personally would never do the switch to t-mobile, just because this company is still way to influential over here.

cheers,

jan

Yeah your right, I used to have 1&1 (a diffrent provider), for Internet and Voip, but now I am back with T-com, cause lets face it, they are really the only onces who offer the real phone, and their pries are now about the same as everybody else offers for Voip.

Arcor cannot be called a competition.

And the things they offer a pretty good, flatrate for Internet,, IPTV, flatrate to all countires bordered with Germany, Flatrate at all HotSpots.

Flatrate to all landline within Germany.

So for now I am happy with T-com.

But I hate T-Mobile for what they did to the iPhone.

spezi · October 30, 2007 6:36AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by anantksundaram

Hmmm.... I am waiting to hear from all our "we're-oh-so-advanced-and-inexpensive" European brethren to explain how T-Mobile can get away with these prices!

By comparison, I can say that I am getting a great deal from my $60 (= 41.67 euros) ATT iPhone plan: 200 SMS, 450 day+3000 wknd & nite mins, and unlimited data.

I don't know how US prices really compare to European/German prices. But in any case I don't think that the T-Mobile rates for the iPhone are very good.

There are a few things to consider, however:

1. All consumer prices in Germany have to include the VAT. So the prices quoted here include 19% VAT.

2. Incoming calls are free.

3. Comparing Dollar/Euro prices is always skewed by the current exchange rate. The Dollar is weak now, so US prices transfered to Euro are cheap. 5 years ago, US$ and Euro were around parity. So your $60 plan would have been 70 Euro (incl. VAT), Whether a plan is affordable or not depends more on the income level of the local population. A comparison I am not able to make.

g-news · October 30, 2007 7:07AM

They're not going to sell too many iPhones that way. Switzerland is generally one of the most expensive places for mobile telephony, but compared to these prices, we're calling almost for free.

0.29 euro for an SMS? That's around 40-45 Rappen, compared to 10-20 Rappen per SMS on average here.

I'm sorry Apple, but if you think you can cut the same deal here in Switzerland, I won't be buying an iPhone.

Making money is good, screwing your customers is a different story.

saschke · October 30, 2007 8:13AM

Considering these rate plans, I think I will stay in an elite minority as an iPhone owner here in Germany...

And I CAN go without Visual Voicemail..

pach · October 30, 2007 8:44AM

You forgot to say the the transfers are limited:

Plan M: 200MB

Plan L: 1Gig

Plan XL: 5Gig

If you reach the limit, the speed is limited to:

64Kbit/s download

16Kbit/s upload

And is not clear if the use of the their hotspots will count as part of this transfer.

ALL THIS REALLY SUCKS!

Apple and T-Mobile unveil iPhone rate plans for Germany

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