The iPhone 3G goes on sale at Virgin stores around Australia this morning, offering the country's most generous iPhone data allowance at 5GB.

Virgin is selling Apple's 8GB iPhone 3G for $0 upfront on a $70 monthly plan, which includes $520 worth of calls and 1GB of data. For an extra $30 per month, customers can receive an extra 4GB of data and opt for the 16GB iPhone 3G for $0 up front. All Virgin iPhone plans are for 24 months and it has no initial plans to sell the iPhone 3G outright.

"What we hear from our customers is that they really want the iPhone not just because it's a cool device but they want to do stuff with it, and I don't think that's been catered for in the market so far," said Virgin Mobile Australia chief executive Peter Bithos.

"We heard pretty loud and clear from customers that they want data. One gigabyte per month is fair but it's not generous. We want customers who scoff at one gigabyte to have the option to get more."

Virgin's iPhone data plans bring its handset-based data pricing in line with its mobile broadband data pricing, whereas other Australian mobile carriers charge a significant premium for data used on a mobile phone, as opposed to data used on a computer via a wireless data card.

"It's odd that wireless broadband pricing seems to be different to mobile data pricing and so we're shooting to rectify that," Bithos said.

"I think as customers become more savvy they will start to realise that data over a network is just data over a network, regardless of the device used."

A subsidiary of Optus, Virgin Mobile Australia offers exactly the same Australian mobile coverage as Optus - meaning Virgin iPhone 3G customers outside metro and major regional areas will fall back to slow GPRS data speeds.

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