T-Mobile USA Executive Offers Letter to Customers Regarding Lack of iPhone

[njgroovy]

Regardless of whether or not T-Mobile uses "common" GSM signals is beside the point, as the current Verizon iPhone 4 has support for T-Mobile's 1700MHz AWS 3G spectrum (via it's Qualcomm MDM6600 "Gobi" chip). It would be trivial for Apple to enable it in firmware. .

There is nothing trivial about enabling a new band on a cellphone handset. The Qualcomm chipset baseband may support the AWS band but the phone still needs an external power amplifier specific for that band and something in the antenna design that will make it tune signals on that band.

They both add complexity and cost, so probably trying to put 1700Mhz in was not worth the effort for Apple considering they'll be either bankrupt or bought out soon.

 

[tidalxwave]

Tmobile is good for the price. Unfortunately, they will not let you downgrade the minutes without a contract. And without an iPhone, looks like I'll be bailing when the 5 comes out next year.