Aug
4

Smartone-Vodafone Unlimited Plan for iPhone

Smartone-Vodafone logoFinally Smartone-Vodafone released a tariff plan that address the usage habits of iPhone users in Hong Kong.

The yet unnamed “iPhone Unlimited” tariff plan from Smartone-Vodafone will cost HKD238.00/month + HKD12.00 (MTR fees) for unlimited HSDPA data usage along with a 18-month contract.

Most mobile Hong Kong phone users and readers of my blog know, Smartone-Vodafone has in the past, differentiated what they refer to as “Internet Browsing” and other HSDPA data usage. This has been one of my pet peeves for years. I always thought mobile carriers should focused on delivering the best connection possible to their customers, rather than coming up with complicated ways to charge their customers for using the connection.

Welcomely this new “iPhone Unlimited” tariff plan does not include the above local data usage differentiations. It only exclude tethering; the use of the mobile phone connected to a computer to act as a HSDPA modem, and roaming data usage from the “unlimited” definition.

As all of you who used iPhone tethering know, mobile carriers cannot tell the difference between traffic via iPhone tethered to a computer and regular HSDPA data traffic on the iPhone from native applications.

Since I currently do not have a contract with my tariff plan at Smartone-Vodafone and my monthly bill had been over HKD300.00, I will seriously consider signing up for the new plan in the next few days before my bill cut off day.

If you current extra data usage is costing your more than HKD45.00 per month and you still had not used your iPhone to its fullest, I would recommend you consider this new plan.

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Tags: Hong Kong, HSDPA usage, iPhone usage, Smartone-Vodafone, tariff plan, unlimited

Posted by Vinko iPhone Subscribe to RSS feed
  • You may find this useful, sets out the unlimited data plans around in HK: http://browngeek.blogspot.com/2009/09/which-is-...
  • Indeed a good analysis of what are offered from the various carriers in Hong Kong.

    The speed of 3G network on all carriers have a downlink speed of 3.6 Mbps except for Smartone-Vodafone and PCCW. Although, both of these carriers are reserving the faster 7.2 Mbps downlink speed for their HSDPA USB Modem plans. At the moment very few mobile phones currently has the capabilities of supporting the faster 7.2 Mbps downlink speed.

    Smartone-Vodafone claims that all locations where 3G coverage is available, their network is capable of up to 14.4 Mbps downlink speed.
  • Stephen
    It seems like Smartone has changed their SmartoneIN portal to be more iphone friendly. The text has become bigger for easier touch access, and the videos that come with the news articles are now encoded in Quicktime which allows you to watch them on the iphone.

    One thing that has disappeared from the portal is access to live TV eg BBC News / CNBC etc. I hope they are working out a way to encode these in quicktime / RSTP so that we can have these streamed to the iphone also.
  • Geoff
    smartone iphone plan:
    $398 unlimited data - $225 rebate on your phone + $36 + $12 admin fee = $221/mth

    Smartone IOM Value pack:
    $96 20MB/day HTML + $0-298 data + $12 admin fee = $108 - 406/mth

    So if using less than 105 MB non-HTML data/mth then seems IOM Value pack is cheaper and if most of your data is POP3 then can subscribe to unlimited POP3 for $30 to save the data charge.

    Or am I missing something here??
  • You are correct, but I don't believe it is best to use the POP3 Unlimited email addition unless you really only use POP3/IMAP traffic much more than other extra HSDPA data.

    Note that for Smartone-Vodafone's "Internet Browsing" they are referring to all traffic through the Mobile Safari and YouTube iPhone applications and not just HTML.
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