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T-Mobile Confirms They Won't Be Getting the iPhone
'We're Waiting For That Call (From Apple),' Says Company

The iPhone 5 will officially be unveiled one week from today, and while the device won't support LTE, it will finally make its way to Sprint's network. Despite a few random rumors to the contrary, T-Mobile has confirmed they won't be part of the festivities. Speaking at the GigaOM Mobilize conference yesterday, T-Mobile CMO and EVP Cole Brodman acknowledged T-Mobile hasn't struck a deal to carry the iPhone yet.

”We’d love to have the iPhone whenever Apple makes that available,” he said, adding that the ball is in Apple's court. "We are waiting for that phone call."

Obviously if T-Mobile gets obliterated in an acquisition by AT&T this will all be a moot point, which is why Brodman's phone isn't ringing. In the interim, T-Mobile continues to focus on Android and their HSPA+ 42 upgrades, this week unveiling their first HSPA+ capable devices.
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kapil
The Kapil
join:2000-04-26
Chicago, IL

1 recommendation

kapil

Member

Sigh.

It's too bad that DT has decided to treat T-Mo USA as an orphan...with proper care and feeding it had the potential to really disrupt the marketpalce.

-GSM based, and with DT's global footprint, could really appeal to an international audience, global travelers, companies looking for international plans for their employees and to reduce roaming costs.

-Customer service is (was?) really excellent in the US...clearly something that differentiates them from the pack.

-Always a market leader when it came to innovative product - UMA, plans without handset subsidies, MyFaves, innovative "email only" blackberry plans, etc.

- Seems to get what customers want...supported jailbroken iDevices and phones not sourced from carrier.

- With current "3G+" HSPA network in place, plenty of runway before huge capital expenditure is required to build out a true next gen network.

- With DTs global purchasing power, could easily source devices user want.

Other than DTs trouble in its core markets, I do not see why they decided they don't want the US market anymore. For the longest time, US was a core part of their growth strategy. Then they hired some bad management...but that's easily fixable.

S_engineer
Premium Member
join:2007-05-16
Chicago, IL

S_engineer

Premium Member

Re: Sigh.

You bring some valid points. What remains unclear, to me at least, was did DT decide to treat T-Mo like an unwanted stepchild before or after the Deathstars offer. Seems to me I remember that DT was doing fine and out of the blue decided to dump it...

PToN
Premium Member
join:2001-10-04
Houston, TX

PToN

Premium Member

Re: Sigh.

Because DT separated itself from TMO USA long ago. Before it was all under DT, now they are like more like partners. TMO USA is its own thing pretty much, it doesnt see his dad but on pay days and a few hours on sundays.
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT
·Frontier FiberOp..
Asus RT-AC68

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They would need a decent network first. If they had combined networks with AT&T a long time ago, but ran as separate companies, they might have gotten somewhere. With their network the way it is, and their spectrum holdings the way they are, they are pretty hopeless.
iFail 5G
join:2011-08-03

iFail 5G

Member

Re: Sigh.

said by BiggA:

They would need a decent network first. If they had combined networks with AT&T a long time ago, but ran as separate companies, they might have gotten somewhere. With their network the way it is, and their spectrum holdings the way they are, they are pretty hopeless.

They get better network ratings than AT&T as it is.
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT

BiggA

Premium Member

Re: Sigh.

Their network is far inferior. Except for one place in Wisconsin, AT&T has a massively larger footprint than T-Mobile. Yes, it doesn't have as much 3G as Verizon, but it's still pretty good, and outpaces Verizon in some places. Not so for T-Mo.
iFail 5G
join:2011-08-03

iFail 5G

Member

Re: Sigh.

said by BiggA:

Their network is far inferior. Except for one place in Wisconsin, AT&T has a massively larger footprint than T-Mobile. Yes, it doesn't have as much 3G as Verizon, but it's still pretty good, and outpaces Verizon in some places. Not so for T-Mo.

I don't think most of their customers really care about a map, they live in big metro's and care about actually using the service. In a large metro area AT&T is the carrier who is greatly inferior. Their HSPA+ network is laughable at best compared to T-Mobile USA.

If you absolutely need rural coverage you would have Verizon anyways. But if you occasionally travel, then T-Mobile is just fine and offers almost the same amount of national coverage as AT&T with roaming agreements.

I live in the backwoods where AT&T is all EDGE, T-Mobile actually has better coverage, and of course Verizon has LTE.
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT

BiggA

Premium Member

Re: Sigh.

People do go on vacation. Even in suburban areas, AT&T is far superior to T-Mobile.
iFail 5G
join:2011-08-03

iFail 5G

Member

Re: Sigh.

said by BiggA:

People do go on vacation. Even in suburban areas, AT&T is far superior to T-Mobile.

Oh ok. I guess thats why AT&T consistently ranks LAST even to T-Mobile. Especially speeds.

I guess this is superior though to T-Mobile's 10mbit/s speeds.


jap
Premium Member
join:2003-08-10
038xx

jap to BiggA

Premium Member

to BiggA
said by BiggA:

Their network is far inferior. Except for one place in Wisconsin, AT&T has a massively larger footprint than T-Mobile. Yes, it doesn't have as much 3G as Verizon, but it's still pretty good, and outpaces Verizon in some places. Not so for T-Mo.

You're focusing on claimed coverage. What is not in dispute anywhere is that AT&T reliability and consistency absolutely sucks. Even Boston Metro suffers AT&T weak/dropout zones, nevermind up here in northern NH where huge swaths of their claimed coverage area simply isn't usable.

My sister and brother-in-law (Seattle) bought a getaway house outside T-Mo coverage and decided to put a hardline in rather than switch everything over to Verizon and lose the international ease of SIM. I'm sure they're not alone.
xrobertcmx
Premium Member
join:2001-06-18
White Plains, MD

xrobertcmx

Premium Member

Re: Sigh.

I would have stayed with T-Mo except that I moved a few miles down the street in Suburban DC and ended up with no coverage. They claim they have 2 bars, and I'm less than a mile from one of their stores. Sadly, no coverage. It is an odd spot, neither Sprint nor Verizon have coverage there. The poor FIOS installer went out my back door and up the hill to get signal. Oddly enough, AT&T does have coverage, not good, but signal.
Right now on at&t's "4G" I get about 5/1 in Reston.
sparc
join:2006-05-06

sparc to kapil

Member

to kapil
said by kapil:

Other than DTs trouble in its core markets, I do not see why they decided they don't want the US market anymore. For the longest time, US was a core part of their growth strategy. Then they hired some bad management...but that's easily fixable.

T-mobile USA was losing too many subscribers for too many years. No matter what the management did, they couldn't get it going to stop the subscriber losses. I believe profits are now declining too.

DT is basically getting out while they can get a good offer. The global synergies are very minor and don't add tremendous financial gains compared to a sale to another domestic carrier who can milk more money out of it.

buddahbless
join:2005-03-21
Premium

buddahbless

Member

Re: Sigh.

Tmobile tried too hard to keep there plans in line with the top competitor for the last few yrs Instead of being innovative like they did from jump street, that pretty much stifled there competitive edge. TMO usa was loosing post paid subscribes slowly, but once the merger was announced they started loosing them hand over fist. However there still gaining a significant amount of prepaid customers just not enough to fully cover there post paid losses. for every 10 lost to post paid 7-8 sign up for prepaid. This sign up of so may prepaid customers IS due too them finally shaking up there prepaid plans to make them affordable and very attractive over the likes of even there smaller rivals "net10, tracphone, boost, virgin, etc.." Alas Its a little too late. By the time TMO " shook things up" the merger was already announced and no matter what you do customers just don't want to here that your A "sell out". If the big news Months ago was there was going to be a new and vast roaming agreement with ATT where TMO customers would be allowed to use voice/txt anywhere that ATT was and in exchange ATT would lease some of TMOs spectrum that would have made a world of a change! However The min the merger (buyout) was announced that left a real sour taste in almost all TMO customers mouths. That was there proverbial " Nail in the Coffin", and as A funny saying goes " Once I woke up and found out I was on the SS Titanic, I started looking for a way off! "

DT gave up on us in the USA a while ago however we could do fine all by ourself if we (TMO USA) would have taken the route less traveled and been more of a leader instead of followers for the last few yrs. Was it Managements fault? was it DT fault? or was it TMO USA practices fault for the decline? that could only be answered by option #4. All of the above !

Snakeoil
Ignore Button. The coward's feature.
Premium Member
join:2000-08-05
united state

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to kapil
maybe due to the exchange rate of the dollar to their currency?
Aren't they on the Euro?

But I agree, T-mobile has always treated me well, and I'm sad to think I may have to end a nearly 20 year relationship.

As for the Iphone, would you allow a company carry your product, if it's future looked uncertain?
What type of headaches would Apple have to deal with if:
AT&T gets T-mo.
If T-mo is divide among Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, and the bargain carriers? [I read a blurb from here that T-mo could be divided up among the main carriers and some of the bargain guys like metroPCS]
Or if DT just shuts T-mo down?

Or would that be up to the carriers that take the former T-mo customers under their wing?
BiggA
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Central CT
·Frontier FiberOp..
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That speedtest is highly atypical. Typical speed tests in various AT&T areas are usually 800kbps-2500kbps, and they have been getting a lot faster over the past couple of years. And then you have Ohio where I've seen speeds over 3000kbps in many areas (albeit significant areas on I-80 are still EDGE).

@jap: Does any carrier have coverage that doesn't have dead/weak zones? MetroPCS? Verizon? The thing is, there are holes on any carrier, and places where no carrier will work since there are no towers in the area.

In NH, AT&T's coverage is bizarre, because it's a PCS system running on towers spaced for CLR. They also don't have that many sites. However, they are adding a LOT of 3G, they now have 3G on much of the lakes, and when you have a good signal, the speeds are incredible. Even in areas that are supposedly marginal around/on Winnipesaukee, I've gotten full signal and 2+mbps speeds. They seem to be covering individual towns, but when driving around, the coverage is totally unpredictable. I also find it ironic that in parts of NH, they roam on Verizon (ex Unicel). It's also ironic that for someone who travels to NH, MetroPCS would actually have the best coverage, since they roam onto USCC.

A) They could switch to AT&T now, or B) they could have gotten UMA capable phones like the new HTC Sensation, or the MT4G, and then used a simple wifi router to get access to T-Mobile. Also, I thought T-Mobile roamed on AT&T for voice and text? UMA is really the only good thing T-Mo has over AT&T.

trparky
Premium Member
join:2000-05-24
Cleveland, OH
·AT&T U-Verse

trparky

Premium Member

Why should T-Mobile get the iPhone?

Why should T-Mobile get the iPhone? It would be a complete waste of money to develop a phone for them when they are just going to be eaten by AT&T soon.

Yeah, the merger doesn't look good right now but that's only because AT&T hasn't bribed... sorry, convinced the right politician yet. Don't worry, that'll happen soon enough and AT&T and T-Mobile users will be all one big unhappy family.

JasonOD
@comcast.net

JasonOD

Anon

Re: Why should T-Mobile get the iPhone?

said by trparky:

Why should T-Mobile get the iPhone? It would be a complete waste of money to develop a phone for them when they are just going to be eaten by AT&T soon.....

I believe there is still some legacy apple-ATT agreement preventing GSM sales to competitors. Plus apple owes a lot to AT&T and perhaps withholding was a nod to them in their fight to merge with t-mobile.

cdru
Go Colts
MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN

cdru to trparky

MVM

to trparky
said by trparky:

Yeah, the merger doesn't look good right now but that's only because AT&T hasn't bribed... sorry, convinced the right politician yet. Don't worry, that'll happen soon enough and AT&T and T-Mobile users will be all one big unhappy family.

pnh102 See Profile? Did you change your name?

tiger72
SexaT duorP
Premium Member
join:2001-03-28
Saint Louis, MO

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to trparky
All it would entail is upgrading the UMTS chipset to support AWS. Doesn't seem to be that big of a deal for Nokia, HTC, Samsung, or LG...

buddahbless
join:2005-03-21
Premium

buddahbless to trparky

Member

to trparky
Apple does not need to "develop" a entirely new phone, just add a simple umts band to the specs. Actually you should be asking why doesn't Apple include the 1700 mhz band in there next iphone instead of why should tmobile get it. If Lord Jobs was to sell there next Iphone with 1700 AWS not only would it be able to take full advantage of TMOs network you could also use it on Wind Mobile and Mobilicity in Canada, (that makes 3 major North American providers) not to mention a few various European and Asian providers.
Clittlej
join:2011-09-17
Aurora, NC

Clittlej

Member

Delete me

Delete me, argh screwed up
Clittlej

Clittlej

Member

RE

Everyone probably seen this coming.
sparc
join:2006-05-06

sparc

Member

no surprise

exactly, why make a unique phone for a provider that won't exist after next year?

they might as well wait till next year and see how the deal plays out. Apple already has three of the four carriers locked anyways so they don't really even need T-mobile for the time being.

RARPSL
join:1999-12-08
Suffern, NY

RARPSL

Member

Re: no surprise

said by sparc:

exactly, why make a unique phone for a provider that won't exist after next year?

It would not need to be a unique iPhone. All that would be needed is for the iPhone 5 to support 1700Mhz (the T-Mobile 3G Frequency) in addition to the current AT&T 3G frequency. As it is, the current iPhone 4s (and prior models) work on T-Mobile (who sells the needed mini-SIMs) as Phones and will fall back to 2G EDGE for data access. Given the long development cycle for the iPhone 5 the AT&T plan to buy and kill T-Mobile is a recent event and if there were plans to be able to support T-Mobile during development then the 1700Mhz support would have been included.

tito2020
@spcsdns.net

tito2020 to sparc

Anon

to sparc
Thats giving us a hint they will merge sooner than later

buddahbless
join:2005-03-21
Premium

buddahbless to sparc

Member

to sparc
The thing to remember is lord Jobs wants everyone to have and I phone most people seem to forget that Tmobile is not the only north American provider that uses 1700 aws, so does Mobilicity and Wind mobile in canada, that makes 3 more providers in north America alone that would be happy to see an fully functional iphone on there network. The Iphone currently has 2 (almost 3 w/ sprint) US and 3 Canadian providers, adding 1700 mhz would give them 3 more in there stride to keep a top (or on par) of android. They would literally be doing what Blackberry did yrs ago, make sure theres a device for almost every major provider to keep there dominance.
majortom1029
join:2006-10-19
Medford, NY

majortom1029

Member

Hmm

Does the current chipset support the 1700 and 2100 frequencies that tmobile uses?
TechWhiz
join:2004-10-30
Phoenix, AZ

TechWhiz

Member

T-Mobile iPhone

Don't forget that if the next iPhone works on AT&T, it will (one way or another) work on T-Mobile... even if the 5th incarnation of the iPhone has to be used with the 2.5 incarnation of cellular technology (EDGE).