T-Mobile to Offer Additional Support for iPhone Users on Its Network

The capability is in the qualcomm radio. Apple just needs to invest in the transceiver, PCB changes and modifications to the external antenna to support the AWS bands. Given these are small hurdles, the hurdle is a political/economics one, not a technical one.

chrmjenkins said:

The specs aren't going to advertise it because apple has no intention of running on those frequencies.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1092599/

AWS is UMTS 1700

Click to expand...

They should just officially start selling iPhones. I'd switch in a heartbeat, if the heartbeat is the length of the remaining time on my current contract.

I had to call T-Mobile Customer Service twice and got treated like a king (phone and text spam related issues). They went above and beyond what I asked and expected as far as crediting my account.

Awesome, just awesome service...

I've heard good things about Verizon as well. Sprint okay....

Then there's the people I know with iPhones on AT&T...

As much as people love to hate on AT&T, I've actually had better customer service with them than Verizon. When people say AT&T has bad service, I never actually hear any details about an encounter they had. It's just taken for fact.

chrmjenkins said:

The capability is in the qualcomm radio. Apple just needs to invest in the transceiver, PCB changes and modifications to the external antenna to support the AWS bands. Given these are small hurdles, the hurdle is a political/economics one, not a technical one.

Click to expand...

Even handsets that support LTE over AWS like the AT&T HTC Vivid have the HSPA+ radio disabled on the AWS portion, again effectively locking out T-Mobile. This shows it's purely politics and probably stipulated by AT&T to have the phone on their network.

I suspect you will see Apple do something similar to "save battery" or something.

Diode said:

Even handsets that support LTE over AWS like the AT&T HTC Vivid have the HSPA+ radio disabled on the AWS portion, again effectively locking out T-Mobile. This shows it's purely politics and probably stipulated by AT&T to have the phone on their network.

I suspect you will see Apple do something similar to "save battery" or something.

Click to expand...

The "save battery" excuse is crap and anyone with a basic understanding of how it works should know it. It is not hard to have something in the OS in the phone to turn off all bands on the chip that can not be used by the carrier. If the phone is locked to AT&T then you turn off the all the things not in use. Heck in the current iPhone there is no way in hell that they do not have those unused bands and parts of the chips just turned off to save battery.

So that excuse is pure crap but not going to stop Apple from using it and then their blind following masses to defend Apple using that excuse. You should look back at when the original iPhone did not have MMS the excuses people used to defend Apple. They were a joke.

Does this go for pre-paid plans too? A friend wants pre-paid, but wants the iPhone. Anyone know? ;-)

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

A little too late. Sorry t-mobile but I've switched after 10 years (voice stream customer). I had an unlocked phone for years.

I love T-Mobile's customer service. Easily one of the best I've experienced anywhere at various types of companies. They've always taken care of my problems with my bill and gone beyond what I expected/needed. If the next iPhone comes here, I'll definitely renew my contract.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

I also love Tmo. I'm rockin' a 3GS on edge and I'm fine with it. Customer service and rates are outstanding.

chrmjenkins said:

As much as people love to hate on AT&T, I've actually had better customer service with them than Verizon. When people say AT&T has bad service, I never actually hear any details about an encounter they had. It's just taken for fact.

Click to expand...

Ok, I will give actual examples:

First off, please note that with AT&T, this is a business account, so there are a ton of lines on it and we spend a fair amount with them every month.

There was fraud committed on the account, which took several months to get the charges reversed, even though they acknowledged the fraud. Then when we went to order new phones, we were "not eligible for an upgrade" as they never fixed our upgrade eligibility status when they removed the line. I had to go to the vice president of AT&T to get this resolved.

They also had double billed us for certain lines and kept saying it was our fault.

Anytime that I need to call them, it takes 15-20 minutes to get a live person and this is through their key contact center, which is supposed to be a lot faster than the consumer side.


Now, let's compare this to T-Mobile, which I personally have as a family line with 5 lines:
We accidentally purchased something, it was our fault, but we called T-Mobile, they immediately reversed the charges.

When they started enabling data by default for smart phones and charging for it, we called them after we were charged about $100, they reversed the charges (and extra) and put a block on it within about 2 minutes.

My wife wanted to be able to tether her Android phone, she called them, they gave her instructions on how to do so without having to pay the extra $5 per month that they officially want you to pay.

We have never waited for more than 2 minutes on hold for a representative and that was when 1/2 the state was experiencing a service outage.

I wonder how this will turn out, best would of course be if they started selling iphones themselves but i don't think thats gonna happen anytime soon.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Good for tmobile supporting even phones they don't sell. I had an unlocked 3GS with tmobile and never did I have a problem with it but when Sprint got the iPhone and tmobile didn't I decided to give sprint a try.
Been very happy with Sprint even though their 3G was slow at launch but now I'm getting on average 1.2mb/s and for me thats pretty good o and having truly unlimited is a major plus!! (did 4.5 gigs last month and no throttling)

I too have had an excellent experience with T-Mo customer service and I've been with them since they were Voice Stream. I also have an ATT iPhone line for a business and their customer service is awful IMO. Its a shame they don't have the iPhone yet, I had $1000 in cash waiting forever to buy one but picked up a Galaxy Nexus instead, couldn't be happier. Here's to hoping the next iPhone makes it to T-Mobile!

Wow...Apple and AT&T must really still be in bed together...this is just wrong that they are locking T-Mobile out. Don't they have the iPhone on some regional carrier down south now too? As soon as T-Mobile can get everyone on 3G phones they can really start lighting up HSPA on 1900Mhz in more areas provided they have the backhaul support in the area. I don't have T-Mobile but I know people who do and would love this addition.

Does anyone have access or can point to a site that actually shows what "pockets"of the country t-mobile uses the 1900 (is it 1900) or iPhone compatible band. Please DM or just reply i can't seem to find the answer anywhere, Im looking specifically for new orleans, but if there is a resource with a list of areas ill gladly look it up myself obviously. Thanks in advance

----------

nateo200 said:

Wow...Apple and AT&T must really still be in bed together...this is just wrong that they are locking T-Mobile out. Don't they have the iPhone on some regional carrier down south now too? As soon as T-Mobile can get everyone on 3G phones they can really start lighting up HSPA on 1900Mhz in more areas provided they have the backhaul support in the area. I don't have T-Mobile but I know people who do and would love this addition.

Click to expand...

They do have it on a regional carrier based out of mississippi, I believe its called Spire now, but they are CDMA not GSM.

Will I be allowed to tether my phone to my laptop? Will the data plan be reasonably priced?

rcappo said:

Will I be allowed to tether my phone to my laptop? Will the data plan be reasonably priced?

Click to expand...

Nothing of that nature will be changing, until they are an official carrier, you will only be able to tether if your JB'en and the data plans will remain as whatever data plans are currently available through t-mobile. They are simply adding the appropriate frequencies, in some places, not yet adopting the phone officially.

Could not wait, switched to AT&T.
Some bumps, but overall pleased.

I did some number crunching, paying 4G price ($10/mo) for EDGE speed (1/20th speed) was simply dumb, ON TOP of paying phone subsidies for a phone I had to pay in full, it was a huge waste of money.