The strategies carriers around the world are employing to price the iPhone 3G and its plans seem to be varying pretty wildly -- a side-effect of the newfound freedom Apple is giving them with the new model -- but in Mexico, where Telcel's signed up to release it, the strategy isn't too terribly different from AT&T's. Plans will run between MXN $399.60 and $876.90 (also available in US Dollar denominations of $41 to $90.85 after tax), and the phones will be priced on a graduated scale accordingly. The 8GB goes from MXN $3,199 down to free, while the 16GB will hit your wallet for anywhere between MXN $4,459 and $1,259. In US greenbacks, that works out to $311, free (because free's free in any currency, after all), $433, and $122, respectively. So yes, at the cheapest plan price, both models cost over $100 more than their US equivalents, but the plan's only $41 at that level, which nets you 200 voice minutes, 100 messages, and 100MB of data. Extra texts are 74 centavos (about 8 cents) and extra data -- a very real necessity -- runs 5 centavos per KB, which is a pretty immeasurably small amount of cash until you do the math and realize that you're going to be shelling out about USD $4.86 per megabyte. Be careful there!

[Via Engadget Spanish]

Seems a little bizarre that AT&T would choose to launch white and lime over this more conservative choice -- but they did, and our Mexican friends get to reap the benefits. The blue variant of the GSM Centro is available via Telcel and Movistar -- exclusivity's apparently not an issue here -- and offers specs that are otherwise unchanged from its international cousins. Eh, on second thought, we think we like the white better anyway.

[Via IntoMobile and Palm Infocenter]

Korea's Pantech launched a handset with Telcel this week in a bid to bolster its presence in Mexico. The S100 is a plain white candybar, and while decidedly lacking in crazy styling -- as per Pantech's usual conceptual flair – it does pack all the basic features an intro-level handset user could ever want. Featuring triple-band GSM / GPRS (no frequency info was posted), 1.8 inch screen, VGA camera, MP3 ringtones, and even a voice note function to babble down your thoughts, it leaves little to complain about. No word on how many monies this will set subscribers back, but we don't expect it to drain even the smallest of piggy banks.

Millions Hundreds of millions of us could not get through the day without access to our beloved mobiles, so the scene in Mexico City this week when the Telcel wireless network went down must have been quite the frenzy, and even more than the mess that was caused by intermittent Cingular outages almost one year ago here up North. Millions of Mexican cellular customers has nothing but silence in the earpieces of all those handsets when Telcel's network, uh -- how do we put this nicely? -- crashed. The details of the network going down centered on a technical fault in western Mexico City, temporarily saturating the Telcel network, Mexico's largest wireless carrier with 40 million customers (a little smaller than Sprint Nextel's customer base here in the U.S.). The good news after the network went down in Mexico City was that it was soon back up, as service began returning just hours later. Service was 90% functional by late afternoon Tuesday.

Pantech might still be an up-and-comer in the US market, but if you head south of the border, you'll find that they're the fourth largest manufacturer -- this coming just two years after entering the Mexican market through an exclusive agreement with carrier Telcel -- but it looks like they're still aiming higher. The Korean company chose this week to announce not one, not two, but five new models exclusive to Telcel in the Mexican market, most interestingly the PG-6200 clamshell with fingerprint recognition and 2-megapixel cam. Also along for the ride are the PG-1310V, PG-3810, and PG-1810 clamshells, and the PG-1610 slider, all with oddly similar specs: 1.5-inch main display and VGA cams across the board.