AT&T announced to its shareholders that it’s iPhone agreement with Apple underwent some substantial changes with the release of the iPhone 3G. AT&T’s press release reads:
“The new agreement between Apple and AT&T eliminates the revenue-sharing model under which AT&T shared a portion of monthly service revenue with Apple. Under the revised agreement, which is consistent with traditional equipment manufacturer-carrier arrangements, there is no revenue sharing and both iPhone 3G models will be offered at attractive prices to broaden the market potential and accelerate subscriber volumes.”
Now of course this substantive change in agreement between Apple and AT&T has the net all a twitter with the possibility that Apple will begin marketing the iPhone 3G on other networks. Even AT&T’s statement that their relationship with Apple is now “consistent with traditional equipment manufacturer-carrier arrangements…” would seem to imply that Apple’s side of the arrangement is also “typical”, meaning that after a predetermined period of exclusivity, they can market their handsets to other carriers.
There are articles at CNET and MacWorld that arrive at this conclusion, and speculate that Apple soon will market the iPhone 3G on other carriers in the US.
The only difficultly is, that it ain’t gonna happen, not right now or anytime we’d call “soon”.
That’s because there’s only one other national GSM carrier and T-Mobile’s 3G network is Voice Only.
That tends to suggest that there isn’t what we call a “Business Opportunity” for iPhone 3G on T-Mobile’s network right now. Of course original iPhones running software 2.0 would be great to have, except Apple seems to have stopped making them.
(note: there are technical details in the comments that are too boring to include in the post)
32 responses to “iPhone 3G coming to T-Mobile any time soon? Don’t bet on it.”
First off, I REALLY WANT the phone to come to T-Mobile because I have to use them for my company. now some technical details:
* T-Mobile has unsupported, 3G data service in a few select cities, but it hasn’t been officially deployed yet, and there is no announced date for 3G data on a national scale.
* Yes Verizon and Sprint have something they’re calling 3G, but it’s CDMA based and not GSM based. The iPhone is a GSM phone, it would take significant re-engineering to make it work with CDMA.
The EDGE service from T-Mobile is painfully slow and, like you, I’d live T-Mobile to do 3G all over as I also am locked in with the company plan. Which cities OOI do they have this “beta” service running in?
Not to be anoying or anything, but “comming”? Thats supposed to be “coming”, right?
Great blog btw, Im very glad the iPhone is coming to T-Mobile here in The Netherlands…
I don’t suppose they’d make a CDMA iPhone for little me to use on the best cellular service I’ve ever had, US Cellular. I’d gladly settle for an iPhone Nano!
@Chris: We have reports of some 3G data service in New York City, there may also be some service in Chichago, and Los Angeles as well, although there are fewer reports from these areas.
But as we all know, the 3G can be turned on and off by the user. I’d be thrilled to have a iPhone 3G to use on T-Mobile without the 3G speeds – especially for just $199.
With Verizon buying Alltel, there is probably a good financial stake in making a EVDO version of the iPhone. 80 million customers would make it workable for Apple and MOST important, access to rural areas where ATT is spotty, especially on 3G. However, IF this were to happen, it would probably drop late this year into next year. If we don’t see an announcement they will wait for the CDMA providers to go 4G (LTE) which will be the same on ATT and come around 2010.
Worse, T-Mobile has 1700 and 2100 Mhz for its 3G, and iPhone’s tri-band radio only supports 850, 1900 and 2100. In other words, even if T-Mobile somehow did get the 3G iPhone, its 3G coverage would be dramatically worse than AT&T, which has 850 and 1900.
Super-wonky, but worth noting.
The new iPhone is not compatible at all with T-Mobile’s 3G network. “2100” is being used above to mean two different (incompatible) things.
When we say the 3G iPhone uses “850, 1900, and 2100”, what we actually mean is that it can support UMTS bands I, II, and V (*). (Listed here). Each of these are actually two separate frequency bands, one used for uplink and another for downlink. When we say the new iPhone supports “2100”, what we actually mean is that it supports 1920MHz to 1980 for uplink and 2110 to 2170 for downlink. Similarly “850” and “1900” are a shorthand for an uplink band an a downlink band.
However, for some reason we don’t seem to use a similar shorthand for what T-Mobile has. T-Mobile’s spectrum is the AWS frequencies (UMTS band IV), which means 1710-1755 for uplink and 2110 – 2155 for downlink). This is only a single pair of bands, and one that the 3G iPhone is not designed to use. Although the 3G iPhone does “2100”, it does not do the corresponding uplink frequency, so it won’t work at all in 3G.
However, AT&T also owns some spectrum in the AWS frequencies in some parts of the US, and may want to roll out 3G services one these at some point if it runs into capacity constraints. Plus, this spectrum is being auctioned in other places (eg Canada) in the near future. It seems likely that Apple will want the iPhone to support this at some point if only for foreign countries, so my guess is that future iPhones will at least be quad band UMTS (**). I think that the only reason that the new phone is not quad band is that nobody has yet figured out how to cram the hardware for that many bands into a phone. I know of no phones that support more than three bands of UMTS at present. I am sure they will come, possibly in the third generation of iPhone in a year’s time.
(*)Probably also VI, which is a subset of V that is used in Japan, but I don’t have confirmation on this.
(**) Bands VII and VIII are likely to be used in Europe before long, so it seems that devices to support all commonly used 3G bands are going to have to support at least six bands (or more technically pairs of bands) within a couple of years.
@ Brad
Ooh, 80m customers on EVDO(?) in the US vs. 6bn+ around the world (including US) on GSM. Yeah, don’t count on it.
I read somewhere, and I wish I remembered where so I could quote the source… but… One announced mobile carrier for iPhone in Latin America is CDMA only. Either they’re switching to GSM, or Apple has built multiple versions of iPhone. If Apple can build a CDMA compatible version of their iPhone they can certain build iPhone for T-mobile.
Let’s not forget how Apple got out of the clones by increasing prices on the next OS by only licensing the current OS. It is very possible that Apple’s agreement with AT&T covers a single version of the software or the hardware.
Frequencies aren’t likely to stop Apple from making deals with T-mobile…
It’s interesting that Apple hasn’t made an agreement with Hong Kong. Hong Kong is A HUGE market. HK has laws preventing carrier-locked phones. Ahh, see……..
Some technical details why iPhone 3G won’t work on the U.S T-Mobile network:
http://switchtoamac.com/site/h…
Leigh – many thanks. Looks like I may have to move :)
Well, some good news that people who have t-mobile (US) on the Band IV of 3g. iPhone is using the infineon chip, which does technically support 3g Band IV (2100/1700). However, it’s not on the official specs of the phone. I’m certain someone will figure out a firmware mod to the chip to “enable” the Band IV soon. With Optus Austrailia, and Mobistar in Belgium offering phones unlocked, there is some hope for those of us stuck on T-mobile US.
Here’s the link to the chip specs:
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:Zw1G1etBEnAJ:www.eetindia.co.i…
Well I definitely want an iPhone when it hits 32GB. That will allow me to move my stuff from my iPod to it. I want to hack/jailbreak/unlock it for use with T-Mobile for “phone” use. That’s all. I don’t want any sort of data plan. I want an iPod that I can answer a phone call on. Sounds like that will still work just fine. Hopefully maybe January 2009 will bring a 32 gigger and some easier access to getting one and hacking it.
I would gladly give up 3G support For the ability to use a Iphone on T-mobile’s network. I checked AT&T’s plans VS my own T-Mobile plan and i tell you there is no way in hell i ever switch to AT&T. So for the time being no Iphone for me. Really tho its not the question of “will” but “when” Someday at Macworld Jobs is going to tell us Iphone is going to start coming to other networks, its only a matter of time.