Optus fills in its iPhone 5S, 5C pricing details
Optus announced its pricing for Apple's new iPhone 5C and 5S devices yesterday, ahead of the phone's worldwide launch due tomorrow.
The telco is offering a selection of five plans for the 5S, and three plans for the 5C — all contracts are for a 24-month duration.
For the premium 5S model that offers the new 64-bit A7 chip, fingerprint-reading home button, M7 co-processor, and the new "champagne" colour option, the telco's plans are:
Tiny: 200 minutes of talk time, unlimited texts, and 200MB of data per month
Small: 450 minutes of talk time, unlimited texts, and 1GB of data per month
Medium: 600 minutes of talk time, unlimited texts, and 1.5GB of data per month
Large: 800 minutes of talk time, unlimited texts, and 2GB of data per month
Kaiju: Unlimited talk time, unlimited texts, and 3GB of data per month
(Plan names made up by ZDNet for brevity, and to reduce the confusion of referring to an AU$62 per month plan that is called the "$35 My Plan".)
| iPhone 5S | Tiny | Small | Medium | Large | Kaiju |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16GB | AU$62 | AU$69 | AU$74 | AU$85 | AU$100 |
| 32GB | AU$67 | AU$74 | AU$79 | AU$89 | AU$106 |
| 64GB | AU$72 | AU$80 | AU$86 | AU$98 | AU$112 |
Users who upgrade their phone and plan from an existing Optus plan to a small or medium plan will receive an additional 500MB of data.
For the colourful 5C, with internals that are much the same as the iPhone 5S, the three plans are:
Tiny: 200 minutes of talk time, unlimited texts, and 200MB of data per month
Small: 450 minutes of talk time, unlimited texts, and 1GB of data per month
Medium: 600 minutes of talk time, unlimited texts, and 1.5GB of data per month
| iPhone 5C | Tiny | Small | Medium |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16GB | AU$62 | AU$69 | AU$74 |
| 32GB | AU$57 | AU$63 | AU$69 |
Compared to the new iPhone pricing from Telstra and Vodafone, Optus falls between its two major competitors.
Optus has expanded its rollout of a new time-division long-term evolution (TD-LTE) network that it is branding as "4G Plus". The new iPhones are compatible with the network, as are the Samsung Galaxy S4 and S4 Mini.
As of the end of June, Optus reported that it had sold 1.08 million 4G handsets.