iPhone App Store (Image: Terence Huynh)

While it is a few hours early in America before that faithful date when the iPhone will be released, New Zealand has gotten its hands on it, with Australia coming soon in less than two hours. But, we have some screenshots of the brand new Apps Store in iTunes.

You will need to upgrade your iTunes to Version 7.7, which you can download here. After that, click on this link to access the store. If you can’t access it, there is nothing wrong - it is just that Apple is restricting it.

Screenshots

Analysts over at Citibank have said that Optus offers the most flexible and best value deals for the iPhone, which will go on sale tomorrow at midnight at Optus’ store in Sydney.

The iPhone plans from Optus offer a no upfront cost on their $79 cap, which includes $550 worth of calls and 700MB of data each month, with all calls are charged 35 cents per 30 seconds with 35 cents of flagfall. Comparing that with Vodafone, it will only offer the iPhone for free at a $169 cap plan. Telstra, however, will offer its $80 plan with the free iPhone, however it will include $70 of calls and 5MB of data.

However, all plans will not go over 1GB of data, as it is expected that customers won’t be able to download iTunes content on the mobile networks, but on the Wi-fi networks.

Steve Jobs has told USA Today that the Apple App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch will launch with "more than 500" applications on the night it becomes available (Tomorrow). Out of the 500 applications, 25% will be free - making that roughly 125 applications that will be free.

Out of those who won’t be for free, 90% of those will be below $10 USD. As well, he also said that a third of applications at the launch will be games. All developers will receive 70% of the sales, with Steve Jobs arguing that it is common in the video game industry.

After 16 years of competition on the telecommunications industry, Optus has said in a submission to the government on the regulation of the fibre-optic broadband network.

It has said that "16 years after deregulation, Telstra continues to dominate the fixed-line sector and the current regulatory framework has proved to be incapable of effectively regulating". Telstra currently resells the network to all telecommunication rivals, since it was partly owned by the government.

While many have established their own networks, it does require some money to start up the network and most of them are limited to a certain area; unlike the one Telstra owns as it covers the entire country.

More can be found on The Age’s article.

The Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification has given an RC rating to Fallout 3. RC typically means "refused classification" and means that the game is banned from sale unless a modified version is made.

Australia has no "adult" rating in its game classification system, even though the ratings were updated to match the film and television ratings in 2006.

Read More on TECHGEEK GamesArena.