The iPhone was introduced yesterday in Ireland! There is, however, one major problem. There is a high fee included with the wireless service that is nicknamed the “Paddy Tax”. This is so beyond ridiculous that it isn’t even funny. Pat himself say it best in this quote: “There is no excuse for paying such high prices and getting so little in return. The minutes, the text bundles and the data package are completely inappropriate for Irish people and the massive difference in what Irish and UK and Northern people get for the same price suggests that they’ll throw any old scraps at the stupid Paddys. “
Pat Phelan has said multiple things about how ridiculous the whole plan from the cell service provider, O2. One of the most interesting things he has said throughout this was that he would be willing to organize a bus system to take people to Northern Ireland to buy their phones up North and unlock them to work on any Irish Network. This, of course, would save many many people a lot of money.
Phelan has also said he believes that Ireland should boycott the iPhone, not because of the phone itself, but because of the outrageous prices on the service. He hopes that o2 will rethink their ridiculous plans. His cellular company has said that they are going to create a guide on how to buy iPhones in the UK or US and unlock them to work on any network.
Th o2 package as I look at it is more outrageous than Phelan made it sound. Just to give you and idea of how bad it is here are a few of the prices. For £35 in the UK you get six hundred texts, five hundred minutes, and unlimited data. In Ireland for £35 you get 100 texts, 175 minutes, and only one gig of data. The data is consistently on all plans capped at 1 G. This is incomprehensibly horrible for any company to even try to pull off.
I don’t know about you but it seems as though the iPhone is causing more problems than it is fixing. Not just in Ireland, but everywhere else too. I think the iPhone is being over-glorified. The iPhone is an awesome device and I am one of the people saving up for one. For Gawd’s sake though, just chill the heck out about it. I know I jumped on the software update bandwagon, but the VoIP was just tooooooo awesome.
Pat Phelan is the CEO of Cubic Telecom who’s main product is the MaxRoam sim card.
