Vodafone New Zealand Has Crazy iPhone Rates

It seems that mobile phone operators love to try and milk every penny out of their customers. The latest talk is about the plans that Vodafone are offering their customers in New Zealand for the iPhone 3G. While the iPhone 3G is probably on everybody’s wish list, the plans that Vodafone are putting out feels like they’re taking this chance to cash in as much as they can on the hype.

What’s this plan that they’re offering? Well, on the maxed-out plan, users will get a 16GB iPhone 3G for $349, and pay $250 a month, which would give them 600 anytime minutes, 600 texts, and 1GB of data. Translated to US currency, that’s $264 for the iPhone 3G, which is cheaper than AT&T’s $299, but Vodafone makes it all back (and more) on the call and text rates, which would be $189, as opposed to AT&T’s $149.99, even though AT&T’s plan comes with unlimited voice, unlimited data and unlimited texts. No matter how you twist the figures around, it looks like New Zealand users won’t be getting much value-for-money with this plan.