O2 to lose UK exclusivity on iPhone

‘MOBILE Entertainment’ is today reporting that O2 is set to lose its UK exclusivity over the iPhone, claiming to have ‘seen documentation that states it will end officially on October 9^th’.

The original deal with Apple signed in late 2007 is understood to have given O2 rights to sell iPhone to 2012. However, the exclusive portion of the arrangement lasts for only two years – although O2 may retain sole rights to the recently launched iPhone 3GS.

Orange and T-Mobile have been strongly linked with iPhone over the summer - there have been rumours of them shipping iPhones to high spending customers – and both businesses sell the device in other territories.

The timing of this news couldn’t comes at a worse time for O2 - currently facing a torrent of criticism about data speeds that users are able to get on the iPhone. The handset supports High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) download speeds of up to 7.2 megabits per second (mbps) but hundreds of users have complained on Twitter that they are not achieving speeds of anything approaching that.

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