T-Mobile to get iPhone 5 as well

Just a day after a high-profile report that Sprint would be getting Apple’s next iPhone, a new report claims T-Mobile USA will be getting it as well.

Citing “a contact within T-Mobile,” Apple tracking blog MacTrast says the U.S. carrier will be getting a version of the iPhone 5 that will run on the company’s 3G network sometime in “early to mid-October.”

The move would be especially notable given that AT&T plans to buy T-Mobile USA off Deutsche Telekom as part of a $39 billion deal announced in late March. While that deal continues to face scrutiny, the end game is one large network, and one single company. If yesterday’s report by The Wall Street Journal of Sprint getting the iPhone 5 comes to fruition, that would put the iPhone on all of the major U.S. carriers well ahead of that combination.

AT&T and T-Mobile use the same wireless technology, GSM, but two use different frequencies for 3G, leaving a person with an AT&T iPhone only able to receive service at the slower 2G speeds. A version of the iPhone that worked with T-Mobile’s 3G signal would solve that problem.

A report by TechCrunch earlier this week claimed the next iPhone would support both GSM and CDMA technologies, allowing a single phone to work with carriers on either technology, suggesting Apple is working to expand the device’s connectivity options Read more… [via cnet]