The Irish are about to get Apple’s trendy phone, the iPhone, priced at €399 (£306) for the 8GB model and €499(£383) for the 16GB version. That compares to £269 and £329 in the UK. Ouch.

As if they weren’t paying enough, the tariffs for Irish iPhone users will offer a lot less than their UK counterparts for the same money.

Contracts will start at €45 (£35) for just 175 minutes talktime and 100 texts, and rise to €100 for 700 minutes of talktime and 250 texts. In the UK, the new entry-level £35 tariff gives users 600 minutes of talktime and 500 texts while the equivalent £75 tariff offers a whopping 3,000 minutes of talktime and 500 texts. For talktime and texts, it seems the Irish are getting around four times less for the same money.

There’s also a data download cap of just 1GB for Irish users, whereas UK customers have unlimited downloads. Irish users will pay 2c for every megabyte over the limit.

The iPhone goes on sale on March 14, in time for St. Patrick’s Day, and with those prices, you’d have to be pissed to buy one.-Martin Lynch

[O2 Ireland]

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