The Macintosh Wizard And PC Tech Blog

O2 the major cellular provider in the United Kingdom has finally been chosen by Apple to begin selling the iPhone cellphone.  The MacWizard reported about the O2 contract with the Apple iPhone back in late August.  This information has been revealed today at a live press event in London, England where the breakthrough cellular product will in fact be available in a few weeks time.  The press event was held at an Apple retail store in London, inside the Regent St store theatre.

The Apple 8GB iPhone cellphone price will be £269 including VAT (value added tax in the UK).  The iPhone will be available on November 9th which is around seven weeks from now.  It has also been announced that The Carphone Warehouse will launch the cellphone for O2.

The iPhone on O2 will have three plans.  Each will include unlimited EDGE & GPRS data and visual voicemail.  The pricing for each plan is £35, £45 and £55.  The lowest priced plan includes 200 SMS messages while the other two include 500 SMS text messages.  Contract length is 18 months and the unlimited data is ‘within a fair use policy’.  The limit is 1,400 Internet pages per day and anything over that would break the agreement.  The plans will also include unlimited WiFi hotspot access in the UK via The Cloud network, which covers about 7,500 spots.  The free WiFi access is key to keeping customers happy as the EDGE network is currently at 30% rollout.  O2 will be releasing unlimited-data contracts to existing customers starting October 1st.

Many rumors and questions over the release of the iPhone in the UK would usher in the 3G iPhone.  Well, there is no 3G model yet and when Steve Jobs was asked about it he said, “The 3G chipsets are real power hogs.  Handset battery life cuts power to 2-3 hours.  Our phone has a talk time of 8 hours and that’s really important when you want to use your phone for Internet, music and video.  3G needs to get back up to 5+ hours, something we think we’ll see later next year.”

Activation of the iPhone cellphone is the same as in the US over iTunes.

There are currently no plans to drop the price within the next 18 months on the cellphone but Steve Jobs did mention changes are on the horizon for the iPhone.  No other carriers or details about the rest of Europe was announced at the event. Via Tuaw.