Just saw today that the market leader here in Austria, Mobilkom, will sell the N900 with its "A1" brand contracts for €299,- (including taxes).

No information is available yet about the details of the contract. I assume the conditions will be similar to their current N97 (for €249,-) conditions: For that, you need a basic voice contract (€7,50) plus data plan (€10,-) plus one of their content packages ("Top" for €15,-) to achieve this lowest price. And, of course, it runs 24 months. You'd need the basic contract and a data plan anyway, but the content package is what hurts. It includes another GB of free traffic, but the other parts - TV and navigation - are mostly useless.

They say existing customers can get the device at the same price as a "my next" handset.

Thanks for the info! The content package would really hurt - I'll stay with the in-house competition...

I am not a heavy user of either phone or data and near WLANs most of the time, so, with bob4er+1GiB data package, I'll expect to have monthly costs of around 10€.

So 299+24*32.50 = 1079 vs. 600+24*10 = 840 (plus no contract obligations).

Hopefully "3" Austria will pick up the phone too... let's see

the newer "3" SIM cards won't work in the N900, so i guess they'll probably wait until this bug has been resolved in a newer firmware before they include it in their portfolio.

Hmm,.... I already wanted to preorder a N900. Thank you for the information. Perhaps its only some problem with UK cards? Perhaps the network code or so?

I think there's an issue with 3 SIM cards in Sweden too, there were some postings about a small delay for Sweden because they wanted the firmware upgrade in place.

no, it has to do with a newer SIM version. 3 in the UK, austria, sweden and i believe denmark are affected. these countries were specifically mentioned in the press release regarding this issue. though i am too lazy right now to search for it

Looks like it's available now from A1.net - at least you can order it from the online shop. Actually, the deal looks much better than benny1967 assumed. So you can get the device for €299 with a 24 month contract (€319 minus €20 "online bonus") and €14,50 per month including 100 free minutes and 1GB data traffic (that's €4.50 for the SMART 100 package and €10 for the 1GB data package). You get voice navigation for additional €6 per month.

In related news, the n900 seems to be in store at some Austrian online shops now.

Update: depending on I don't know what, the N900 link on shop.a1.net changes between "Neu bei A1" ("new") and "Demnächst" ("coming soon") between reloads. Don't know what that says about actual availability. Plus, there's a € 49,90 "Aktivierungsentgelt", so the one-time price actually is € 350, at least for new customers.

argh and i'm still waiting for my preordered and paid QWERTY device...

what to do :-/

Thanks hns.

Really, the conditions aren't all that bad. I already have an A1 contract, so I could buy it for €269,- (!) (minus € 20,- if I buy online, so the actual price is € 249,-).

I need to use 11.500 of my bonus points for this (no problem with that) plus take one of several possible add-ons. I would choose a data plan instead of the navigation thingie, so that would be a 24-month-contract for € 10/month.

Having this data plan is probably a good thing, anyway, if you own the N900. So if I calculate it that way (=data plan doesn't count because I'd pay for it anyway), it's really only €249.