Vodafone Bringing iPhone to New Zealand, Australia and Others
May 6th, 2008
As widely expected, Vodafone will become a dominate iPhone supplier following the signing an agreement with Apple today to sell the iPhone in ten of its markets around the globe.
Later this year, Vodafone customers in New Zealand, Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network. However, it appears that Vodafone will not have an exclusive deal with Apple in all territories. Telecom Italia has announced that it will also be selling the iPhone in Italy. There are also reports that a second Australian carrier will make an iPhone related announcement in the next few weeks. While AT&T has been limiting holiday requests for its staff between June 15th and July 12th 2008 in anticipation of the 3G iPhone release at Apple’s World Wide Developer’s conference at the beginning of June, Vodafone’s markets are not expected to start selling the iPhone until early July.
Of note, Vodafone New Zealand has recently started locking phones on its network for the first time. Although there is only only one GSM provider at present, Orcon and Telecom will soon be competing in the GSM market. However, Vodafone will reportedly unlock new handsets if people want to shift to another provider or use someone other than Vodafone when roaming overseas for NZ$50 - a small price to pay for those looking for an official source of unlocked iPhones (assuming the policy remains the same following its introduction).
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