When it was announced the 3G iPhone would be made available in South Africa via Vodacom, I posted suggesting that it would arrive around 11 July. This was not a guess – Apple’s website listed the arrival date for South Africa as 11 July. The website has since been altered to simply say ‘coming soon’ and Vodacom seems to think that the media is responsible for the perception that the Jesus phone will arrive in July. The truth is that if anyone is to blame for the misconception it is Apple, along with Vodafone, the latter of which issued a press release internationally, stating that South Africa was in a group of 11 countries to receive the phone from July onwards.

The truth is that Vodacom seemingly has no idea when the iPhone will be available locally. Sources within the company have speculated that it may even be as late as October.

You can, however, pre-order the iPhone on the Vodacom website. Vodacom has even embedded an iPhone advertisement into its site’s header that links to the order page.

Vodacom is obviously taking the lead from Vodafone in terms of local availability. Vodafone, in turn, will undoubtedly have trouble keeping up with the demand for the iPhone across multiple regions and will have to juggle stock availability and release dates to ensure that it doesn’t sit with disgruntled customers across the globe.

That said, Vodacom must have some indication, albeit vague, of when the phone will arrive if it has made pre-orders available. If you ask Vodacom, however, they will merely tell you that they can’t say anything at this stage. Which is understandable, since the decision relies on extenuating factors beyond Vodacom’s control.

So unfortunately we have no real indication of local availability or pricing at this stage, except that Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that the eight gigabyte version of the phone will not be available anywhere in the world for more than $199 on contract. The price announcement by Jobs was a clever marketing ploy, but really means very little to potential buyers as your contract instalments could be anything, as could the retail out-of-contract price, should that even become an option in South Africa.

My friend Ben Kelly at Finweek has speculated that the local iPhone contract will be similar to the modelling of the Blackberry contracts available from Vodacom, but this is just educated guess-work.

Anyone who claims to know when the iPhone will arrive in South Africa and what it will cost at this stage is either lying or works very high up the ladder at Vodacom or Vodafone. Then again, I doubt that even executives at either company could provide definitive answers at this stage. July seems optimistic, but not impossible. Sometime around September may be more likely.