In response to complaints from customers and the media, UK iPhone carrier O2 announced that it would be upgrading iPhone plans with more minutes and text messages for less money. Those on the £35 per month plan will now receive 600 minutes and 500 text messages, up from 200 minutes and 200 text messages. Those who were paying £45 per month get 1,200 minutes per month and 500 text messages, and people on the £55 per month plan will simply pay £45. All UK customers will be switched automatically to the new plans by mid-March; O2 says it will notify customers by text message when the switch is complete. There's also a new £75 plan that offers 3,000 minutes and 500 text messages. (For those in the United States, the exchange rate is currently about $2 to £1, so you can double O2's prices to see how they compare to AT&T's.)

All plans come with unlimited data, though that's subject to O2's excessive use policy, which they have now stated explicitly ("iPhone Launch Set for UK and Germany, with Murky Data Plan," 2007-09-20). It reads:

Your O2 tariff for iPhone allows you unlimited use of O2 UK's EDGE/GPRS networks and The Cloud's UK Wireless LAN network, for personal internet use, email and Visual Voicemail (VVM) on your iPhone only.

All usage must be for your private, personal and non-commercial purposes. You may not use your SIM Card in any other device, or use your SIM Card or iPhone to allow the continuous streaming of any audio/video content, enable Voice over Internet (VoIP), P2P or file sharing or use them in such a way that adversely impacts the service to other customers of O2 or The Cloud.

If O2 reasonably suspect you are not acting in accordance with this policy O2 reserves the right to impose further charges or disconnect your tariff at any time, having attempted to contact you first.

O2 is on top of the release of the new 16 GB iPhone, providing instructions for moving from an older iPhone to a new one and allowing customers to buy one and use it for the remainder of their existing contract, rather than requiring a new contract.