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iPhone Finally Coming To T-Mobile In 2013
New submitter kc67 sends this report from ABC:
"Five years after the iPhone originally launched in 2007, T-Mobile will finally start carrying it. It might not be as buzz-worthy as when Verizon finally got the iPhone back in 2011, but it's going to be a pretty big deal for T-Mobile subscribers next year, when the carrier starts selling Apple products. ... T-Mobile USA CEO John Legere said while speaking at the Deutsche Telekom conference Thursday that it will carry the iPhone and will offer it in a different way. 'What was missing? A certain number of customers wouldn't come to the store if we didn't have the iPhone,' Legere said. 'We worked very, very hard for a deal that made sense for us.'"
Unfortunately now a certain number of customers won't come to the store if there are douche bags.
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http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/mobile-phones/
and you see an iPhone 5. T-Mobile have been offering it over here for a considerable time.
About time the US caught up with other parts of the world...
I hope all the i-shiny folks coming over will not ruin that.
They are moving to a non-subsidized model, which is hot. As it stands you get your iPhone for $200 then end up paying $1400 extra in some cases for an overpriced 2 year contract. I bought my own phone and did this already on T-Mobile, I only pay $30 a month for "unlimited" data (up top 5 gigs at "4g") and 100 minutes of talk time, which is all I need.
Sprint especially made the mistake of just committing to a huge number of iPhones at a staggering price they must now subsidize. Will be interesting to see if people are still willing to pay the True Price for an iPhone (e.g. $600) versus maybe $450 for a high end Android phone.
Dunno, I know a lot of non-techs that moved en masse from iPhone to Galaxy S3 and were like OMG THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER!!!!!! and they're crazy Mac users that have Macbooks.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Legere mentioned offering the iPhone for $99 and then allowing customers to pay off the rest in monthly increments.
FTFA
You should probably be aware that you can use Android without any connections to Google at all, despite the FUD. Also, Android is not your only other option.
What's mentioned in TFA, but not TFS is the news they include that they will be moving away from subsidies. This I think is an awesome improvement! Think about it, "I can pay $30 less per month, put that into a savings account and every 2 years get a good phone... or I can get a good phone now and pay an extra $50 per month for a worse plan and if I mess up it ruins my credit" They mention changing subsidies to a "payment plan" type of thing, which is really what it should be considered. I completely welcome this change.
As a result, they provide their phones with minimal margins because they'll make it up in monthly fees(for the service). I bought my wife a phone with T-Mobile and I was amazed I could get a relatively decent Android phone for $200. Try finding a decent smart phone from another carrier at that price. Also, her plan is flat $50/month with no contract, and unlimited everything. Last time I looked at AT&T, the equivalent plan was $110/month and a similar low-mid-range phone was $450 without a contract
T-Mobile doesn't have iPhone in the US because we have a highly fragmented spectrum for cell phones. T-Mobile uses GSM, which is compatible, but in the US it's on an entirely different set of frequencies that the iPhone doesn't support.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Now I wonder if any of those customers acted like this.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I have a Macbook and I think it's a mostly "meh" experience with a shitty screen and heavy hardware.
I just bought an iPhone 4S for use on a prepaid plan and found the experience to be very different, that is, much better than the Macbook.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I only pay $30 a month for "unlimited" data (up top 5 gigs at "4g") and 100 minutes of talk time
Wow. In Canada, with Telus, $50 gets 1 gig of data, with the "option" of paying $25 for an extra 2 gigs. And Voicemail is an add-on for another $8 a month.
Three Squirrels
The world has moved to Windows Phone.
Now I gotta share my mobile bandwidth with Siri-using morons ("Siri, is that rain?"). Also guessing my days of unlimited data are numbered.
You're against T-mo getting more spectrum so they can improve coverage? Why?
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
Kinda. AT&T has had the iPhone for ages so if that were the only problem...
The issue is the 3G version of GSM, UMTS, which T-Mobile, until now, has run on the AWS spectrum. (AT&T was running it on 800MHz Cellular and 1900Mhz PCS) iPhones don't support AWS.
T-Mobile is doing "spectrum refarming", adding 3G to its PCS frequencies. The interesting part of this is that this means an influx of iPhones shouldn't significantly affect users of better smartphones, as we'll still be able to use the AWS 3G (and in some cases, both AWS and PCS.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
T-Mobile doesn't have iPhone in the US because we have a highly fragmented spectrum for cell phones. T-Mobile uses GSM, which is compatible, but in the US it's on an entirely different set of frequencies that the iPhone doesn't support.
That's not correct. T-Mobile uses the 1900 band in the USA and all the iPhones support that fine. It's trivial to find accounts of people with unlocked iPhones who currently use them on T-Mobile in the USA. T-Mobile doesn't have the iPhone in the USA because they were basically unwilling and perhaps unable to pay Apple's exorbitant prices to get permissions to sell it.
As long as they want, assuming they don't take on the accounting practices of the bigger carriers. Companies like Verizon and AT&T make a ridiculous profit on their data service, yet they cry over losing even one cent. Here's my math to back it up.
I was bored one day and decided to do some digging on those data overages the cell phone carriers love to charge. $.10/MB seems like a fairly common rate, but what people don't realize is, that works out to about $33,000 per Mbps per month. The amount of data you can send in one month at a rate of 1Mbps is about 330GB, or 330,000MB. At the overage rate of $.10/MB, that's $33,000 a month. That's a new BMW, every damn month.
I know what you're thinking, though. "Well, it's a penalty. It's supposed to be ridiculously high..." Yeah, that's understandable, but it's not much higher than their normal data rates. Taking Verizon's plans as an example, 1GB is $50/month. 50,000 cents divided by 1024MB is $.48/MB. But that's unfair because that includes unlimited minutes and text messages, so let's consider this - their 2GB plan is $10 more. That's $10/GB. 10000 cents divided by 1024MB is $.094/MB.
9.4 cents per MB regular rate.
10 cents per MB at overage rates.
Either way, we're paying $33,000/Mbps for cellular data service. Do you know what the going rate is for IP transit in the telco industry? At bulk rates, $1-2/Mbps.
tl;dr: T-Mobile can play the Unlimited Data game as long as they want. The cost to them is low, they just choose not to fuck their customers as hard as the big guys do.
True, but there are a few benefits that the other carriers don't have.
1. You can pay a higher down payment to reduce your monthly payment.
2. You can pay off your balance early to reduce your monthly payment.
3. You can upgrade at any time.
Made a typo. Ignore my extra zero. "1000 cents" and ".94 cents" respectively when comparing the normal data rate. Still ridiculous at $3300/Mbps. Would you cry over losing a slight edge on a 1000x markup?
The 1900mhz refarm is to support HSPA+ on the iPhone not 3g.
T-Mobile abroad and T-Mobile in the USA have little in common other than a brand name. They used to be more related but they have forked.