In a couple of unexpected moves, O2 has today opened up its online shop doors to iPhone 3G pre-orders and updated its pay-as-you-go (PAYG) tariff page to state that this price plan will now not be available until later this year.

In a apostrophe-starved email sent this morning to those who had previously registered their interest on the O2 website, the company said:

iPhone 3G is here and its [sic] free*.

The iPhone you've been waiting for. Order from 8am today.

As promised we are writing to you to keep you updated on the next steps to getting an iPhone 3G. We do, however, expect demand for iPhone 3G to be very high so orders will be processed on a first come, first served basis so that we can be fair to all customers. Orders will be limited to one iPhone 3G per customer.

So what does that asterisk after the 'free' mean? Explanation after the jump.

In fact, free means signing up for a £45/month contract at a minimum of 18 months. On the £30/month tariff (also 18-month minimum) the iPhone 3G attracts a £99 price. But all this we already know.

What is news today is O2’s reluctance to open up the iPhone 3G to PAYG – at least for now. Despite the PAYG tariff’s apparent leaking a few days back, O2 told Mobile Computer last week that the PAYG tariff wasn’t "finalised". It appears now that our O2 contact was telling us the truth.

As for the O2 shop, well, we just tried to buy an iPhone 3G for courier delivery on Friday 11th July. It gave us this message:

"We're sorry you're unable to access the Online Shop at the moment.

We are currently making improvements to the site to provide customers with an even better shopping experience."

It seems customers have shopped... and O2 has dropped.

UPDATE: So, the O2 shop came back up and we resumed our effort to buy an iPhone 3G. We spent 15 minutes adding bank details (for the contract direct debit), and credit card details (for the one-off handset fee), our current address (for O2's records) and our previous addresses for the past three years (for O2's peace of mind) and... and... we got this message:

Your order has completed or encountered problems. To ensure your privacy, we have automatically ended your session. Click Continue shopping to begin again.

Has our order been completed? Or has it encountered problems? We called O2 to find out. The otherwise-helpful telesales assistant told us that he "didn't know" because "loads of people are calling in with this problem and we can't view anyone's details." Okay - the old 'unprecendented demand' chestnut. We asked our O2 helper what we should do next. "Well," he suggested, "leave it 24 hours to see if you get an email from us. If you do, your order has been succesful." And if we don't get that email? "Then your order encountered a problem."

Have fun out there today folks. 

[O2 shop]

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Free iPhone 3g 4u  - Free iPhone 3g 4u     |07/07/08 8:32 PM Has to be the most expensive "free" phone ever! Reply | Quote

free iphone  - Free iPhone     |16/07/08 7:03 PM Can't wait for free iphone to come out, gonna get one straight away! Reply | Quote

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