I finally took the plunge and chose a service provider for my next generation smart phone.

The final decision came down to cost, as the device is the same on all the networks.

Orange my current mobile telephone company have the same device (HTC Universal) on Orange its called the SPV M5000.

The device would be more expensive on orange for me.

From Orange

Device £299
Monthly Rental £20 (100mins/100texts) Data Allowance 4mb £4
Monthly Cost £24

TCO Year1 £587
TCo Year2 £288

From O2

Device £199
Monthly Rental £19 (50mins/25texts) Data Allowance 5mb £8
Monthly Cost £27

TCO Year1 £523
TCo Year2 £324

So if the mobile Companies are listening a £64 TCO year 1 price difference is enough for me to change service provider.

The year 2 TCO on o2 is higher, but 12 months from now I can negotiate a killer airtime deal, or leave them, it’s as simple as that. I have used this strategy a few times, suffer in year one then run with more reasonable costs in year 2 or 3. My last year with orange was something like £100 all year including voice/texts and GPRS data for e-mail on the move.

The hardware in my retail supplied version is unlocked allowing me to use my preferred network supplier.

Cost wise there is not a lot in it, Cosmetically the Orange SPV M5000 is silver and the O2 Model is Black.

The low amount of minuets in each service plan doesn’t bother me, I work in tech support, people call me, not the other way around.

You can buy the phone out of contract its currently £540 + VAT
http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=119353

Note TCO=Total Cost of Ownership

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 17th, 2005 at 12:10 am and is filed under O2 XDA Exec. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.