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Only a day after Orange made the big announcement that they will be offering the iPhone in the UK - Vodafone, one of the other big network operators climbed on the bandwagon.

According to The Guardian, Vodafone have agreed a deal with Apple to also offer the iPhone in the UK, although a date has not yet been agreed. Its also interesting to note how many subscribers Vodafone claim to have lost since the iPhone's introduction - 159 000. This is a fairly significant number as the total number of iPhone users is reported to be over the million mark in the UK, meaning Vodafone could potentially regain 15% of this market.

This is excellent news for consumers as now a price war is imminent, and yet another network to share the data load.

After an almost 2 year monopoly on the iPhone in the UK, O2 will lose its exclusivity to Orange by the end of the year, as reported over at TheNextWeb.

Whilst I must admit, overall I think O2 handled the iPhone popularity spike fairly well compared to its network operator friends across the pond, I am still all for competition in this smartphone market. O2 succeeded in launching MMS, which AT&T could not, following the launch of OS v3.0. It has also offered the iPhone at fairly competitive rates if you compare them to other top end smartphones on offer.

For me though, they fell down on 2 salient points. The first was their refusal to praise the early adopters, and instead of allowing a reasonable upgrade option on a new model, O2 instead forced them to pay out their existing contract in order to get the latest 3GS model.

The second was the latest tethering fiasco, which generated a heatwave of debate amongst iPhone fanatics. Tethering is the ability to use the iPhone as a 3G dongle attached to a laptop or desktop. Whilst essentially offering an 'unlimited' data plan to all iPhone users who sign up for the phone, with the introduction of the latest OS and the tethering functionality, the network operator blocked all use of the iPhone as a 3G tethering device, without purchasing an additional bolt-on. The bolt-on is an additional service you add to your monthly bill to give you xGBs of usage. This bolt-on also happened to be at a higher price than other, smaller competitors offered similar 3G dongles.

Orange, which recently announced they were joining forces with T-Mobile, making the joint operator the new largest operator in the UK, will in the near future sell both the iPhone 3G and 3GS. This will bring a long awaited monopoly to an end and hopefully introduce consumer-friendly competitive pricing. Combined with that, the 3G load will now be spread across multiple networks infrastructure, which will hopefully ease the load and speed up the overall mobile experience on the iPhone.