UK supermarket giant Tesco has just announced tariffs for iPhone, which will go on sale from the company next Monday (December 14th).
The headline they’ll be using in adverts is that this iPhone is available for as little as £20 per month. Whether you go for a contract or decide to pay-as-you-go, this gets you £60 worth of calls and SMS messages (assuming PAYG customers top up at least £20 per month, which qualifies them for extras – and obviously encourages them to switch to a contract). Also consider that the free credit is applied once a month and only lasts for one month, then automatically expires.
From what I can tell, the prices here are broadly competitive with the big telco offerings. Orange, for example, is charging about the same for handsets on PAYG, but with an increasingly complex selection of tariffs. At least the Tesco offering is relatively simple.
What I’m not completely sure about is the data deal on offer here. The table says you get unlimited data for the first 12 months only, so what happens after that? Presumably, you pay; but there’s not even any small print here that says how much.
None of these deals are designed to lure customers away from their existing contracts, that’s not Tesco’s style. They want to grab as many new customers as possible with the “iPhone for £20 a month” banner – and UK shoppers can expect to see that being advertised far and wide.
Worth noting: Tesco Mobile is a joint venture with two partners: Tesco, and O2. O2, of course, was the telecoms company that got the first two years of iPhone exclusive sales in the UK, before all these other upstarts jumped on board.
