Having recently purchased an iPhone 4 following the demise of my first generation iPhone I thought I would take the opportunity to review what tariffs are currently available.

I am also fortunate enough to own a 3G version of the iPad (sadly not the iPad2) which like the iPhone4 it uses the more modern ‘micro sim’ rather than the long established full size sim.

I soon established that the U.K.’s ’3′ Network offered by far the better deals for both “pay as you go” and contract for sim only sales with good data allowances.

What I did not expect was that they would openly discriminate between identical offerings available to full size sim users versus micro-sim (apple) users, specifically with respect to their sim300 plan. For full size sim users, this is offered in two flavours, the first being a SIM ONLY 300 – 1Month rolling contract at a cost of £15 per month the second being the very same plan but on an annual contract basis with monthly instalments of £10 – a great deal.

So I’m thinking “that’s for me” and pop over to their iphone micro-sim page to order the £10 monthly annually renewable contract only to find it’s not offered. The £15 per month rolling monthly contract is however available.

On phoning ’3′ I got nowhere other than an agreement that it didn’t seem fair to differentiate as after all the content of what is provided is exactly the same. Go figure! Seems crazy to me. The person I talked to seemed to think it was related to research showing iPhone users where ‘heavier’ users in terms of texts, data etc.
Just what difference that makes I don’t understand. After all, if you use more than contracted, you pay the difference! don’t you?

Comments?