Alongside the fifteen new countries that will get the iPhone 4S on November 11th, Apple’s latest and greatest handset will also come to its fourth US carrier: the little known regional carrier C-Spire Wireless. And for subscribers on a budget, the iPhone 4 will be coming to C-Spire too.
The iPhone 4S will be available to C-Spire customers for the same prices as the other networks: $199 for the 17GB model, $299.99 for the 32GB and $399 for the 64GB.
Where C-Spire is trying to beat out Sprint, Verizon and AT&T is the low-cost market, offering less expensive voice and data plans including a $50 unlimited data plan option with 500 minutes of talk. But that plan is pretty deceiving: the so-called “unlimited” data excludes streaming, and the plan may even violate FCC net neurality rules.
Who is C-Spire? They are a regional carrier in the south who service 875,000 customers in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, George and Florida. Strictly small potatos, but it was easy enough for Apple to bring the iPhone 4S to the network because it uses the same CDMA tech as Verizon and Sprint. Meanwhile, T-Mobile is the odd man out of the iPhone game thanks to a wonky implementation of GSM.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
16 responses to “The iPhone 4S Will Go On Sale At Its 4th American Wireless Carrier Next Friday”
Typo in the price. Should be 16gb for 199 rather than 17gb
George is a state now…
T-Mobile’s “interpretation of GSM” is no wonkier than AT&T’s. Neither one of them uses the global standard GSM frequencies. Apple’s iPhones support AT&T’s frequencies as well as the global ones; they could just as easily make an iPhone that supported T-Mobile’s and the global ones.
“potatos”?
Get an editor!
who is George and why is he a state?
C Spire is just a franchise renting time on Verizon’s network.
Dammit…. I mean come on. Before reading the first post about this story on cult of mac, I have never heard of C-spire. T-mobile is the best carrier I have been on, awesome coverage, and still no iphone. I don’t want to leave t-mobile, even if that means I don’t get the iphone.
I think I speak for T-mobile when I say: Hopefully Tim Cook will realize that they could benefit from T-mobile and work out the “wonky implementation of GSM” for the iphone to work properly on T-mobile. :(
(P.S. Typos everywhere in the article)
Supposedly, Panama is in one of those countries, went yesterday to @panamamovistar , and they didnt have a clue about it, and they are supposed to be the ATT of Panama. #lame