iPhone coming to Jersey

We’ve been waiting a whlie – although some of us have already got one from the UK or France and unlocked it – but the iPhone is finally, officially coming to Jersey.

The provider: Jersey Telecom and Sure – although neither ‘official, Apple branded retailers’. The islands state owned telco and the Cable and Wireless owned plucky upstart have announced that they will be selling the Apple iPhone – the new 3G version complete with all features.

But JT will only have a very limited number of handsets – so if you want to make sure you get one you’ll have to call JT and register your interest.

Sure have said they should have plenty and so will be selling them in their shop within the next few weeks – apparently.

Interestingly – the handsets sold in Jersey, as with all other phones sold in the island will be available unlocked – so you can buy them through Jersey Telecom or Sure and then put another networks sim card in them.

This is because both of those networks are selling the iPhone curtosy of the European provider who is selling stock to the Jersey networks for them to sell on.

You’ll need to sign up to an 18 month contract to get the phone – don’t have the Sure prices yet but for JT the cheapest iPhone contract set at £35.99 – that will get you the phone for £199.99.

I imagine Sure will offer it on their 800 contract which comes in at £75 per month.

You can also get the phone for just £49.99 with JT but that will cost you nearly £60 per month.

At the moment though, and this is a bit of a downside given the main selling point of the iPhone is data, is that there’s no unlimited data plan for the iPhone deal with JT in Jersey.

You will have to pay 10p/MB for all data you use – apparently JT are looking at unlimited options, or even limited options for an extra monthly cost – similar to their Blackberry deal – but don’t have anything concrete yet.

Sure do offer a unlimited data but it’s only 800kb on their 800 plan – but you could get a booster which is about £10 per month for 1gb of data.

The other interesting side to this story is Airtel-Vodafone. The Bharti Telecom and Vodafone joint Channel Island network.

They’ve told me they WILL be offering the iPhone – eventually – and are currently in talks with Apple and Bharti to offer it as the official Jersey network – with visual voicemail and everything.

But not sure when that’s coming or what it will cost.