A quick rant, if I may. If such things worry you, come back tomorrow. I'm sure Stephen will have something much calmer to say, although I can't explicitly guarantee that.

Amidst the never-ending hype prior to the Australian launch of the iPhone 4, there's a critical detail that just about every single article I've seen to date has missed out. It's a detail that's crucial not only to iPhone users, but to anyone who uses a smartphone.

As I write this, Telstra and Optus have released their iPhone pricing plans, and to the surprise of almost nobody, they're functionally identical to the old 3GS plans, with only a few quirky bumps around the edges. Vodafone hasn't released plans for its Vodafone and Three brands yet, but having looked over (insert blatant plug here) the basic plans on offer from Telstra and Optus for PC Authority, I've got a pretty good idea where they're likely to go. With the competition playing steady as she goes games, why rock the boat and make things harder and more expensive for yourself?

That annoys me, but nowhere near the quoted "value" of each of the plans. I've been as guilty of this as anyone in the name of getting a quick article out, it should be admitted. Still, when you buy a $49 cap plan, the quoted "value" is apparently around $400-450.

It's utter rubbish. It's not $400, $450 or even $300. In no way is it $450. It's $49 value, because that's the sum of money (at a minimum) that the telco takes out of your pocket each and every month for the privilege of using the service. That $400+ figure is based on value figures that the telcos set themselves, and can depend on flagfalls, the types of services you're using and the location you're contacting. Year by year these values change, not because telephony gets rarer or has to be mined out of the earth at great cost, but essentially because of competitive pressures when and if they exist at all.

It's worse with actual mobile data, too. The "cost" of iPhone data differs from the cost of iPad data which differs from the cost of data for a Blackberry which differs from the cost of data for a feature phone which differs from the cost of data for a USB modem and all of this differs depending on whether you're a business or consumer customer or a postpaid or pre-paid customer. I don't think I've ever used the word "differs" as much in a sentence before, but that aside, it's all the same darned network. Data packets are data packets, but as Orwell might have put it, some packets are more equal than others.

That straight number cost gets even worse with SMS, a service that's of such a marginal cost to telcos that I'm stunned they still even charge for it. It also ignores the other "costs" of the service, like whether you've got to pay to retrieve voicemail that you received only because the network was down wherever you were. Is there a cost for the stress of missing a call through no fault of your own? There should be a rebate.