Orange vs. O2 – which iPhone tariff is cheaper?

So Orange announced it would be offering up the iPhone on its tariff from 10 November earlier today, but has it offered us the O2-bothering, price-war inciting bargain tariffs we'd so hoped for?

In a word - hardly - but it has managed to undercut O2 on every tariff it has.

This may by just pennies or so on most, but there is a whole cheaper tariff in its 24 month offering that O2 doesn't have an equivalent for.

If you reckon you can get by on 150 inclusive minutes and 250 inclusive texts per month, you can get yourself on the £29.36 tariff over the 2 years – O2's cheapest 24-month tariff comes in at £34.26 per month albeit with a rather more sizeable allowance of 600 minutes and 500 messages (Orange has this offering too).

Ultimately though, this means that on the 24 month tariffs you can pick up an 8GB 3G iPhone on Orange for £704.64 total spend (phone cost plus line rental for two years) instead of O2's £822.24, a 16GB 3G S for £829.64 versus £909.35 on O2, and a 32GB 3G S for £929.64 over O2's £997.43.

Of course it'll all be down to how much you need the inclusive allowances as to whether the price drop will be worth it.

It's also worth noting that the cheapest 18 month tariff on O2 comes in at £29.38 for 75 minutes and 125 texts, while for 2p less on Orange at £29.36 per month you get double the allowance with 150 minutes and 250 texts. Bargain.

Finally, if you were thinking of doing a bit of tethering with your iPhone, it seems Orange is winning the price battle on this as well.

Although we don't know what data allowance you'll get at the moment, you'll be able use your iPhone to get your laptop online wherever you are from £4.89 a month, compared with O2's offering which starts at £14.68 per month for 3GB. Even if the data allowance is considerably smaller than that it's nice you'll be able to get the functionality at a third of the price.

It seems that Orange has worked carefully to undercut O2 by just enough that will grab interest, while still keeping the high prices they know customers will pay. It will certainly be interesting to see what Vodafone has to offer us in the new year.

What do you think – has Orange done enough to pull customers away from O2? Will its better 3G coverage sway you? Check out O2's and Orange's full tariff details and let us know below.