A closer look at Japan’s SoftBank iPhone 3G price plan

SoftBank allows you to pay the cost of the iPhone itself in 12 or 24 monthly installments. The monthly plan excluding the costs of iPhone consists of:

1. A calling plan - with White Plan being the least expensive at 980 yen (around 9 dollars)
   
   
2. A S! Basic Pack - 315 yen (around 3 dollars)
   
   
3. A data plan called Packet Flat Rate Full – Unlimited Mail/Web use starting from a fixed monthly charge of 1,029 yen (around $10) to a maximum of 5,895 yen (around $59)
   

About Packet Flat Rate Full
If you stay under 1,568,000, which is around 1.6 megabyte, you will pay 1,029 yen for the data plan. Once you exceed 1.6 megabytes, you will be charged 0.084 yen for every 128 bytes until you reach around 9 megabytes. One you reach 9 megabytes, you will be charged 5,958 for data, and your data plan automatically becomes unlimited.

The minimum monthly fees: 2,324 yen (around $23)
The minimum fees you have to pay to use an iPhone is 2,324 yen (980 + 315 + 1,029).

That may sound cheap, but…
Realistically speaking, to fully reap the benefits of the iPhone and staying under the minimum data usage allotment of 1.6 megabytes, it’s pretty hard.

According to Mac Fan October issue, here are some stats for reference

• Receiving 13 mails with photo attachments will put you at 9 megabytes of data usage
  
  
• Accessing Apple’s website 18 times with put you at 9 megabytes of data usage
  

My Mindset

I think forcing myself to stay under 9 megabytes of data usage is quite painful. 9 megabytes, that’s really little. That’s like 2 to 3 mp3 song files.

It’s probably better to just expect to pay 5,985 for the data plan. And if I stay under the data usage of 9 megabytes, then I'll consider myself lucky that month.


Source:
Mac Fan October 2008 Issue
SoftBank