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This Friday at 6:02 folks in the UK will become the first people outside the U.S. to 'officially' get a chance to purchase the iPhone. It'll go for £269 (about $538) - including VAT - with a 18 month contract from mobile operator O2.

As Apple is doing on this side of the pond, it’ll limit sales to e two iPhones per person. In addition to being available from O2, you'll be able to buy the iPhone directly from Apple and at Carphone Warehouse stores. That's a total of 1,300 locations and online.

Tariffs (data plans) start at £35 per month for 200 minutes voice, 200 SMS messages and unlimited data, going up to £45 ($90) for 600 minutes and 500 messages and £55 ($110) for 1200 minutes and 500 messages. All plans also include unlimited use of The Cloud Wi-Fi network, located in over 7,500 cafes, restaurants, airport lounges, pubs and other locations in the UK.

iPhone activation will require an Internet connection; an iTunes Store account or a major credit card; the latest version of iTunes; and a PC or Mac with a USB 2.0 port.

O2's currently has 17.8 million customers. No doubt it is hoping the iPhone will boost those numbers even higher.

It's being reported that the UK iPhone will ship with a new firmware update, 1.1.2. This update apparently blocks the jailbreak that allows users to install third party software natively on iPhones and iPod Touches with 1.1.1 installed. Firmware 1.1.1 did the very same thing for an earlier jailbreak not too long ago.

There's a good chance that Apple will release 1.1.2 for iPhone users in the US soon as well. If you're one of the thousands to have installed the 1.1.1 jailbreak and are happily running applications directly on your iPhone, you may want to consider holding off on 1.1.2 until a jailbreak has been developed by hackers for that firmware upgrade as well.

Apple plans to finally introduce a software development kit (SDK) to allow developers to create official third party applications for the iPhone next February, which may or may not make the need for a jailbreak moot. It all depends on how much access Apple gives developers to the iPhone’s resources.

A couple of weeks ago, Apple estimated some 250,000 of the 1.39 million it shipped were bought with the intent of unlocking them for mobile networks other than AT&T's.