Broad Rollout of iPhone to Small U.S. Carriers Coming on April 20
Earlier today, we noted that nTelos Wireless, a CDMA carrier based in Waynesboro, Virginia, announced that it would begin carrying the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 on April 20. Pricing for the device comes in at $50 below the standard pricing charged by Apple and the major national carriers.
We've been updating that article with mentions of several other carriers that have also announced iPhone launches for that date, and it is quickly becoming apparent that this is a rather significant coordinated rollout to small CDMA carriers. Among the carriers launching the iPhone on April 20:
- nTelos Wireless (Virginia)
- Alaska Communications (Alaska)
- Appalachian Wireless (Kentucky)
- GCI (Alaska)
- Cellcom (Wisconsin): Website updated with "coming soon" banner, and WSAW reports that April 20 is the launch date.
- Matanuska Telephone Association (Alaska)
With six small carriers having already announced today, we're also asking readers to let us know if they spot word of any others involved in this rollout.
Mississippi-based C Spire Wireless was the first regional carrier in the United States to begin offering the iPhone last November, and today's announcements represent a significant expansion of that channel. While the carriers announcing availability today represent only a small fraction of U.S. mobile phone users, the trend of making the iPhone availability to these customers may help some of these carriers remain viable as the cellular marketplace continues to become increasingly dominated by the major carriers.
Update: GCI has confirmed to MacRumors that it will be offering the GSM version of all iPhone models, including the iPhone 3GS, which will be free with a two-year contract. The carrier operates both GSM and CDMA networks, and it was initially unclear on which network the latest iPhone models would run. All of the other carriers announcing today operate CDMA networks.
Popular Stories
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Best Buy is discounting a collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, this time focusing on the 14-inch version of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a...
There are widespread reports of Apple users being locked out of their Apple ID overnight for no apparent reason, requiring a password reset before they can log in again. Users say the sudden inexplicable Apple ID sign-out is occurring across multiple devices. When they attempt to sign in again they are locked out of their account and asked to reset their password in order to regain access. ...
Apple used to regularly increase the base memory of its Macs up until 2011, the same year Tim Cook was appointed CEO, charts posted on Mastodon by David Schaub show. Earlier this year, Schaub generated two charts: One showing the base memory capacities of Apple's all-in-one Macs from 1984 onwards, and a second depicting Apple's consumer laptop base RAM from 1999 onwards. Both charts were...
Top Rated Comments
Hey. Legitimate question. I WANT to understand and love prepaid. Everyone here that's NOT from the US pokes fun at us and our overpriced service plans and how we're all so short-sighted as to "fall for" the subsidized phone. But I must be dense... I don't see any other LOGICAL option.
Currently, I'm on at&t.
I get the "high-end" iPhone every two years. My subsidized price is $399. I pay $39.99 for my voice and text. Then slap on another $30 for iPhone Data Plan. In summary, that's a total of $400 + $70/month.
Grand total of $2,080 every two years.
It seems to me that, if I were to go with Straight Talk, I'd be looking at $1000 for a carrier-unlocked "high-end" iPhone + $45/month. That's a grand total of $2080 every two years.
(Wow... I didn't do the math until I typed it!!! That's kind of a funny coincidence.)
Beside the point that they are pretty much IDENTICAL in cost (although Finance people would say the at&t deal is "cheaper," given time-value-of-money arguments), there are other things that make me lean toward at&t, although some of these, admitedly, may be wrong/misguided:
* I get a discount for working at my company (not at&t, to be clear) that amounts to about $8/month
* I pre-order the phone and get it ON LAUNCH DAY; whereas I think that getting your hands on carrier-unlocked phones is more difficult???
* Even if I don't LIKE it, I at least UNDERSTAND at&t's data/throttling policy
* Is Straight Talk even offering 4G/LTE services? Or is their agreement with at&t always going to put them on a "second tier?"
So, why is it so DUMB-AMERICAN to fall for the subsidized phone? And please... this is a real question. This topic always comes up on MR. I've asked my palzzzzz to explain it. Nobody can. So now I'm "asking MR."
Thanks.