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More Claims of T-Mobile-Compatible iPhone

Friday September 10, 2010 6:25 am PDT by Eric Slivka

Earlier this week, Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson noted that he had been informed by a "T-Mobile manager" that the carrier would begin offering the iPhone 3GS (but not the iPhone 4) by the end of this year. The claim was met with widespread skepticism, in part because, unlike AT&T and the iPhone's other carriers around the world, T-Mobile's 3G network operates within the 1700 MHz spectrum that is apparently not supported by the iPhone.

But more claims of a 1700 MHz-compatible iPhone surfaced today from Canadian firm Quebecor, which is launching mobile service under its Vidotron brand, which will use the frequency band for its network. According to a company executive vice president, an announcement about a compatible iPhone coming to the carrier should occur "in the coming months".

Perhaps the juiciest thing to come out of the launch today, though, happened during the Q&A session of the launch press conference, where one of the company's executive vice presidents apparently noted that Apple is in the process of manufacturing an AWS-compliant iPhone and that we should "expect an announcement in the coming months" regarding Vidotron's launch. That certainly lends credence to recent rumors that T-Mobile USA is preparing to offer the iPhone -- like Vidotron, it uses AWS 3G -- but just as with the perpetual Verizon rumors, we're going to hold off on calling this one gold until we see the units on a store shelf.

Like Engadget, we continue to view these rumors with some skepticism, as claims of the iPhone coming to various carriers have been rampant for quite some time with no results, and there have been no rumors coming from Apple's Asian suppliers regarding a tweaked manufacturing process that would be required for the hardware.
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rdowns
22 months ago
Why waste time, money and resources re-tooling a model that's last year's technology?
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samh004
22 months ago
Surely the best idea would be to fit every mobile system into the latest product, including CDMA and all that, but I guess with Apple's desire to be thinnest all the time that idea is going to be tricky.

Likewise I can't see the point in changing the 3Gs, it's not got a terribly good selling point compared to the 4.
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Icedog
22 months ago

Why waste time, money and resources re-tooling a model that's last year's technology?


The only reason I can think of why they would modify the 3GS and not the 4 would be some sort of loophole or concession with the contract with AT&T allowing them to do so.
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blairwillis
22 months ago

The only reason I can think of why they would modify the 3GS and not the 4 would be some sort of loophole or concession with the contract with AT&T allowing them to do so.


This makes a lot of sense. Hadn't thought of that.

And what this really means is if the 3GS comes to T-Mobile, then the 4 will follow some time later.

The 3GS goes in at a "can't-say-no" price point ($49? $29? $1?) and suddenly Apple converts a ton of T-Mobile'rs to the cult. Then hit them up for another $199/$299/$399 a year later, with an "early-upgrade" offer on an iPhone 4 or 5.

Naysayers just don't "get it": Apple wants more phones in more hands. They've milked the AT&T deal for what it was worth. Time to sell more phones.
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commander.data
22 months ago
I hope this find it's way to WIND Mobile too, which is licensed to use AWS in Canada outside of Quebec.

The choice of iPhone 3GS as a launch device is strange and as others have mentioned is probably some contractual thing with existing carriers. Hopefully it's only temporary as Apple transitions to broadening their cell phone spectrum support and T-Mobile, Videotron, and others aren't permanently stuck one generation behind. It would be good if these AWS iPhone 3GS models have a 16GB option too say at $149 or lower.
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00146CB58122
22 months ago
The 3GS was referring to the previous rumour. I can't see any mention of a 3GS referring to this Canadian rumour.
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quinney
22 months ago
The big announcement will be that the blabbermouth VP at Videotron blew the iPhone deal by flapping his lips too early.
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skeep5
22 months ago
like feeding the dog scraps
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QCassidy352
22 months ago
"Naysayers just don't "get it": Apple wants more phones in more hands. They've milked the AT&T deal for what it was worth. Time to sell more phones."

You base that on what, other than wishful thinking?

I do believe t-mo over vzn.
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m3coolpix
22 months ago
Let 'em put the iPhone on Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint.....every network.

More bandwidth freed up on AT&T! :D

Then we'd get the 'iPhone is faster on our network' commercials though....:mad:
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