By Stephen Schenck | November 29, 2012 11:31 AM
Over the past several years, Apple’s various iPhone models have made steady inroads upon the networks of the four major US carriers. By now, only T-Mobile is left out, and even it’s been working on creating an iPhone-friendly image, running advertising campaigns inviting interested users to bring their own unlocked iPhone to the carrier’s network. Though there’s still no native support for T-Mobile’s primary 1700MHz 3G band, the carrier’s been working fiercely on adding new 1900MHz coverage to its towers, finally giving the iPhone high-speed wireless data where it’s available. In light of all that, some analysts are now saying that the stage is set for T-Mobile to outright start sales of the iPhone itself, and it could announce such a move as soon as next week.
For the moment, this is all highly speculative, and the theories lack a lot of detail on just how such an arrangement would work. While analysts cite the hard work T-Mobile’s put into preparing its 1900MHz service as a sign that it’s ready to offer the iPhone, we’re still not quite sure; only something like 1.5 million T-Mobile subscribers reportedly live in areas with that coverage, and with 34 million subscribers, that’s just a tiny fraction of its total network.
If this theory is accurate, the announcement might go out around December 6 or 7. We’re well curious to see what happens, but for now we’re not holding our breath.
