Orange Vs O2 - iPhone price plan differences

[Jamey]

Hey, I don't know if you guys will find this interesting but I know it would affect my bills personally so maybe it might for the rest of you too. Apologies for starting a new thread but I couldn't see an existing one to slot this info into.

 

Everyone seems to be talking about how Orange's iPhone price plans are identical to O2 (apart from the 750MB data usage cap) but there are two other key (albeit related) differences that I haven't really seen mentioned in many places online so far:

 

1) On O2 sending an MMS message (picture or video) uses four texts from your bundled allowance instead of being instantly chargeable but on Orange they bill you 25p per message straight away for every MMS message sent, regardless of whether you have anything remaining in the allowance for that month.

 

2) Similar to above, but on O2 roaming SMS message sent from abroad also use up four texts from your bundle (not from every country, but certainly the popular places like EU, USA, etc) whereas yet again Orange see fit to charge you for every message, even if you've still got loads of bundled messages left.

 

I realise these two things maybe aren't iPhone-specific and are perhaps more general differences between the two networks but in light of the current Orange/iPhone media coverage and the amount of people out there who might be comparing between the two (and deciding which network to go for) I thought this information might be of interest.

 

I've called Orange just now to confirm this and I'm on O2 so I already know how their side works having done both things mentioned above successfully.

 

HTH

[Mozzer3k]

Excellent topic.

 

I literally just found this after googling 'orange iphone plans identical' and it being on the first page, within two hours of it being posted, and me happening to be searching for it.

 

Very interesting information and lets me know exactly which network to choose.

 

Cheers

[Jamey]

No problem. Glad it helped

[buzby]

As O2 are losing the right to sell, O2 will cease to be an option for new customers, they'll have to go with Orange, then Vodafone (and if the latest rumours are true, 3).

 

For those who had dreadful coverage and slow data, Orange will probably be a better bed as they have greater capacity on their network - but as O2 was brought to its nees with the data overhead of iPhone users, this would be my last phone of choice, and certainly nt one I'd risk my credit rating for on a 2 year contract.

 

That would be madness!

[Human Writes]

As O2 are losing the right to sell, O2 will cease to be an option for new customers, they'll have to go with Orange, then Vodafone (and if the latest rumours are true, 3).

 

O2 aren't losing their right to sell the iPhone, Apple have chosen not to renew their exclusive agreement with 02 to sell the iPhone in the UK when this contract ends on 9 November.

 

02 will still be able to sell the iPhone but they won't be the only operator in the UK able to do this, Orange start selling it on 10 November, Voda have confirmed they will be selling the iPhone from early next year - I think I've seen Feb 2010 mentioned somewhere.

[Jamey]

Correct, O2 will still be selling the iPhone for a long time to come.

 

I don't know how Vodafone's plans work with regard to MMS and roaming texts coming out of your bundled allowance (or not) but Orange are certainly the worst choice in that department.

 

I never used to send picture (or video) messages before, partly because I used to be on Orange and they charge for each one and partly because the phones I've had in the past had very clumsy MMS implementation.

 

But when I switched to O2 and got an iPhone I thought that since it was free to send MMS I'd give it a go and I was very pleasantly surprised by how well the iPhone deals with MMS. It's basically just a part of the threaded conversation view that you use for normal texting. A small version of the picture or video appears in the conversation view and you just tap on it to see it fullscreen and play the video.

 

It really is a joy to use and completely free on O2 (but not Orange).

[Sol]

In Orange's favour, they do have an unlimited text bundle; O2 don't.

[Jamey]

Fair enough, I guess if you send more than 20 texts per day every single day of the month (ie you're a teenager ) then yeah, it might be important to you but that certainly doesn't apply to me.

[Sol]

Do you work for O2, because that is a silly comment.

 

500 texts is not enough for a lot of people, and yes, O2 have added a new 500 text bundle, bur again, 1000 texts may not be enough. It isn't for me, but luckily, I already have the unltd bolt-on; new customers won't have that option.

[Jamey]

Bitterwallet have now published a story based on the MMS/roaming info:

iPhone on Orange – you’ll pay for MMS, and texting from abroad | BitterWallet

 

I appreciate 500 texts isn't enough for some people, but I do still think you'd have to spend a lot of your daytime texting to get through that. Probably quicker to actually call and talk to people for some of those conversations.

[buzby]

I stand corrected, however it appears that Orange have done some magor network rebalancing (in association with 3UK) to provide am ore effective backhaul of data. The exclusivity of newer handsets will of course continue...

[Sol]

As we've pointed out O2 will suit some people and Orange will suit others. I text a lot more than I call my friends and regularly go over 500 monthly texts; others may not. Some movie lovers may prefer Orange for Orange Weds and music lovers prefer O2 for priority tix, it's personal choice.

 

Orange's network looks far better than O2's as well, so hopefully with their losing the exclusive deal they'll sort the network out.

[Jamey]

I agree with most of that but one thing I'd like to say about the network part is this...

 

Before I switched to O2 (a few months ago) I was on Orange and I was using an official (factory unlocked) iPhone on Orange's network. Now I have an O2 (ie locked) iPhone so I'm probably one of the few people that has used an iPhone on both networks in the UK for any length of time.

 

Within London I haven't noticed any difference at all in the speed or quality of 3G coverage.

 

If you live elsewhere or you travel around the UK a lot then fair enough, it might come into play, but if you're living in a place where O2 do actually have reasonable 3G coverage (ie one of the larger cities) then I doubt there's any benefit to be gained from changing to Orange.