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.