The exclusive deal between Apple and O2 in the UK is running out and this week both Orange and Vodafone announced that they’ll start selling 3G iPhone contract packages on their respective networks in the near future.

While no exact launch dates were given, with Orange this will probably be November/December 2009 (i.e. in time for the Christmas shopping rush), while Vodafone is likely to go live with the iPhone early 2010.

This marks the end of the official exclusive O2 and Apple partnership which meant that the UK consumers wanting to get their hands on an iPhone were limited to a choice of 1 when it came to choosing their mobile network.

While no information is available on the pricing models Vodaphone and Orange are going to offer, in all likeliness this is going to be good news for the UK consumer, as more competition means the prices are bound to go down.

We’ll obviously keep you posted when we get news of the actual releases dates and information on the deals the other networks are planning to offer on iPhone contracts.

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