[3GScottishUser]

Just back from holiday in Turkey (again I know)... and got a call from Vodafone UK offering me exclusive value extras as a valued customer.

An iPad2 with 16GB of RAM for an upfront cost of just £300 then only £32 a month for 3GB of mobile data for 24 months!! I could not stop laughing! £1068 for an iPad with 3 GB of mobile data a month!!

Nuts!

[Ben]

16GB of storage I'm guessing ;)

Yeah, shocking deal all the same.

On Three, the same thing costs £229 + £25/mo (x24) = £829, and that's for 15GB of data. And that's on the network with the most extensive 3G coverage of any.

[3GScottishUser]

Only thing is that Vodafone will have HSPA+ in my street in August VS 3 who won't have.

Academic really as I have good Wi-Fi coverage for home use and can use my Galaxy S as a Wi-Fi hotspot on the rare occasions when I need tablet Internet access out and about. I still need to carry a mobile for voice calls anyway.

You would need to have a very heavy personal or business use to justify paying a mobile network an additional £25 a month for tablet 3G coverage I think.

[Ben]

It's not really an additional £25 a month because that includes tablet subsidy.

I agree it's a lot, though.

[Hands0n]

It is an affordable way for people to buy into the iPad technology if they can't come up with the up-front cost of the hardware. And of course, they are getting an amount of airtime into the deal.

[3GScottishUser]

It is an affordable way for people to buy into the iPad technology if they can't come up with the up-front cost of the hardware. And of course, they are getting an amount of airtime into the deal.

£1068 on Vodafone or £829 on 3 is a hefty price to pay for a tablet with 16GB of Flash Memory (thats not even upgradable)!

You would need to be pretty poor at arithmetic not to figure out the excessive cost of these offers.

[Hands0n]

£1068 on Vodafone or £829 on 3 is a hefty price to pay for a tablet with 16GB of Flash Memory (thats not even upgradable)!

You would need to be pretty poor at arithmetic not to figure out the excessive cost of these offers.

Yea, that would be the case if it were just for the tablet computer - although not quite so much as you might think if you bundled in the cost of funds if you were to take out a loan for one.

However, these deals, especially that of Three, represents good value because it includes the airtime also. So the punter is not simply paying £829 for the tablet but also for the airtime to run it on.

Now, if your situation is such that you don't need or want the airtime ... then why on earth would you buy into the proposition. However, for those that do need/want, then [at least with Three] the deal represents quite good value for money, regardless of whether or not you actually use up the 15GB a month allowance that is included.

I that when considering these bundled hardware and airtime deals it is essential to factor in all of the elements in the equation.

[getti]

how do u know Voda will have HSPA+ in August?

[3GScottishUser]

Because one of my neighbours is a senior national accounts manager for Vodafone and his information has been 100% correct previously.

My local cell site is actually across a river in Clydebank which is a fairly big town and the site is situated within a Vodafone technical centre so it's highly likely that would be one of the first to be upgraded. It was one of the first with HSDPA and 3G.