The iPhone Travesty

So, some bright spark from Telstra made two particularly unpopular decisions regarding the iPhone. I'm certain both were motivated by profit.

1. Only one Telstra shop in Adelaide selling iPhone on launch day
   
   That, and they only had 5 staff. When I got there 30 mins early there were over 40 people in queue. By 9am I'm told there were over 100. Given what I know of how long it takes the Telstra shop sales drones to process someone, 15 mins x 100 divided by 5 staff = 5 hours minimum.
   
   In addition, I'm told the Telstra sales system went down, meaning nobody could buy any phones.
   
   
2. Price gouging the iPhone
   
   I was expecting it to be expensive. However, given the extremely late release of plans by Telstra, it gave little time to compare on the day. Having sat down and compared the plans, they are effectively charging double for the iPhone compared to the other carriers.
   

People often think I'm crazy for wanting an iPhone with Telstra however there are some good reasons behind it:

• Best overall coverage
• UMTS 850 coverage

What does this mean? Well, the iPhone only supports 3G (UMTS) on 850, 1900 and 2100MHz. Optus, Vodafone and Three only do UMTS on 1900 and 2100MHz and even then, only in the metro area.

If I was to get an iPhone on any network other than Telstra, i may as well have just got the 1st generation handset because 3G would have been of very little benefit.

So what am I going to do? Wait for now.

Update: I've waited long enough, had a chance to evaluate my options and went to the Telstra Shop at Westfield Marion (SA) only to find that, despite having plenty of iPhones, their computers had been down all day and the only people to walk out of the store with an iPhone bought it outright!

So now, I wait until they've processed my manual forms. *sigh*