There were endless rumours and speculations on which Malaysian telco would be the first to introduce the iPhone to the country. While there are tens of thousands of iPhones already in use in Malaysia, none of them are technically “legal”. Maxis, the largest mobile telecommunications company in Malaysia, has revealed their iPhone offering. The bad news? It’s expensive, and complicated.

Maxis is currently doing a pre-booking on their website, which ends on 17th March 2009. Beware, there are 12 contract plans available to choose from. The lowest price for the 16GB iPhone is RM260 (US$70), which comes with:
- a 24-month contract at RM375 (U$100) per month
- 2500 domestic minutes
- 3GB data
- RM2,000 “advance payment”

The most expensive 16GB iPhone is RM2,960 (US$800), which comes with
- 6 months contract
- “commitment fee” of RM80 (US$21)
- 500MB data

I wish they had just gone for unlimited data. Since you can’t (easily) tether the iPhone to your PC, the monthly data usage would hardly reach 3GB anyway.

Overall, I’m quite disappointed with this offering. I’ll wait a few months until the hype dies down, and maybe I’ll be able to pick up a second hand iPhone 3G on the cheap.

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Filed under: iPhone

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