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Cellphones Iphone Apple

iPhone Finally Coming To T-Mobile In 2013 154

Posted by Soulskill from the they-move-quickly dept.
New submitter kc67 sends this report from ABC: "Five years after the iPhone originally launched in 2007, T-Mobile will finally start carrying it. It might not be as buzz-worthy as when Verizon finally got the iPhone back in 2011, but it's going to be a pretty big deal for T-Mobile subscribers next year, when the carrier starts selling Apple products. ... T-Mobile USA CEO John Legere said while speaking at the Deutsche Telekom conference Thursday that it will carry the iPhone and will offer it in a different way. 'What was missing? A certain number of customers wouldn't come to the store if we didn't have the iPhone,' Legere said. 'We worked very, very hard for a deal that made sense for us.'"
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iPhone Finally Coming To T-Mobile In 2013 More

iPhone Finally Coming To T-Mobile In 2013

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  • New problem (Score:5, Funny)

    by bluefoxlucid ( 723572 ) on Friday December 07, 2012 @04:56PM (#42219759) Homepage Journal
    Unfortunately now a certain number of customers won't come to the store if there are douche bags.

    • If that were the case, they'd have to stop selling Bluetooth headsets.

  • Applies to the US only (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 07, 2012 @04:59PM (#42219783)

    http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/mobile-phones/
    and you see an iPhone 5. T-Mobile have been offering it over here for a considerable time.
    About time the US caught up with other parts of the world...

  • t-mobile has great pre-paid plans (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 07, 2012 @05:00PM (#42219795)

    I hope all the i-shiny folks coming over will not ruin that.

    • T-Mobile says it already has a million iPhone users - people like me who brought their own device.

      So we "i-shiny" folks are already there.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SeaFox ( 739806 )

        Yes, but you brought you own device and continue to use it. You're not one of those high-maintenance customers who needs to upgrade their iPhone every time a new ones comes out, or throws a huge fit if you get a scratch on the casing and wants the whole phone replaced, etc. So you're not the same sort of customer the AC is referring to. Customers who raise operating costs for carriers and make them raise prices for everyone.

        • That's what we go to our churches for, i.e. Apple Stores. Those customers who go to a T-Mobile store for device support probably don't know whether they have iOS or Android running on their phones and thus are totally unworthy of the i-sheep(TM) badge. ;)

    • I used two iShiny phones on T-Mobile prior to my current Android. You can't beat T-Mobile's $30 5GB prepaid plan.

      • $30/month (with autopay), unlimited messaging & data on Virgin Mobile. That seems to beat it to me.

        • Can you link me to it? I think it is now $35/month.

          That plan was also very good, and it includes more minutes (300). The downside is less high-speed data (2.5GB vs 5GB).

          • Can you link me to it? I think it is now $35/month.

            As I said, it's $30 with autopay. Virgin Mobile saves you $5/month on various (maybe all) plans if you set up credit card autopay. I was doing that when I had a prepaid mobile phone, and was down to $5/month overall cost (it charged $15 every 3 months).

            http://www.virginmobileusa.com/shop/cell-phones/iPhone4S-16GB-phone/features/#plan [virginmobileusa.com]

            Though here's the link I have posted before about even cheaper prepaid plans. I have no idea which if any can be used with

  • They didn't want to make same mistakes others did. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RightSaidFred99 ( 874576 ) on Friday December 07, 2012 @05:00PM (#42219801)

    They are moving to a non-subsidized model, which is hot. As it stands you get your iPhone for $200 then end up paying $1400 extra in some cases for an overpriced 2 year contract. I bought my own phone and did this already on T-Mobile, I only pay $30 a month for "unlimited" data (up top 5 gigs at "4g") and 100 minutes of talk time, which is all I need.

    Sprint especially made the mistake of just committing to a huge number of iPhones at a staggering price they must now subsidize. Will be interesting to see if people are still willing to pay the True Price for an iPhone (e.g. $600) versus maybe $450 for a high end Android phone.

    • Re:They didn't want to make same mistakes others d (Score:4, Informative)

      by Desler ( 1608317 ) on Friday December 07, 2012 @05:08PM (#42219883)

      Legere mentioned offering the iPhone for $99 and then allowing customers to pay off the rest in monthly increments.

      FTFA

      • Still, monthly increments imply that the user will still be aware of the cost of the phone. Unlike the bulk of US operators where different phones are subsidized at different rates, with the user left with the impression that all phones cost either $0, $99, or $199. In this case, I expect the user will see:

        iPhone: $99 up front + $X/month for 24 months + Service Fee
        iPhone: $600 up front + Service Fee
        Nexus4: $299 up front + service Fee


        And yes, I think that will create a significant change in custome
        • Right. Plus, the customer can even put more down up front and pay less over the course of the 20 months. The customer can also pay off the installment plan early, too, which would also reduce their monthly bill. The other carriers won't let you do that.

          • Plus, once the plan is paid off, your monthly rate goes down. The other carriers don't do that; if you don't jump on the upgrade opportunity as fast as possible, you end up wasting even more continuing to pay as though you still owe money for the phone.

            I've been a TMoUS customer for years, and have been happy with them. This makes me more happy. Thank $DIETY AT&T's grubby paws were kept away. My only real concern out of this is that they might end up facing worse network congestion. Right now, it's incr

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by anagama ( 611277 )

        When I bought my first Android phone at T-Mobile some years back (MyTouch 3g) I walked in totally ready to buy the phone outright and get on a no contract plan. When I told the sales person that was what I wanted to do, he said "cool" and then went on to say that if I wanted to, I could get the same no contract plan, and finance the phone at 0% interest for 18 or 20 months -- can't recall exactly but something less than 2 years. Obviously that is a better deal even then just buying the phone outright so t

    • Re:They didn't want to make same mistakes others d (Score:5, Informative)

      by rueger ( 210566 ) * on Friday December 07, 2012 @05:27PM (#42220057) Homepage
      I only pay $30 a month for "unlimited" data (up top 5 gigs at "4g") and 100 minutes of talk time

      Wow. In Canada, with Telus, $50 gets 1 gig of data, with the "option" of paying $25 for an extra 2 gigs. And Voicemail is an add-on for another $8 a month.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xaxa ( 988988 )

        And I just signed a 2-year contract for 1G data, some minutes (can't remember) and lots of texts for £6/month. US$10?

        Admittedly, it's an awkward deal -- it's really £12/month, with 50% rebated by sending in copies of my bill (about 6 times over the two years), so it takes some time on my part. But I've done it twice before now, and it works.

        • 12 pounds a month on Giffgaff gives you unlimited data, heaps of free calls and texts and no contract at all.

    • >$30 a month for "unlimited" data (up top 5 gigs at "4g")

      That's like seeing a hot looking hooker and when you get up close its a tranny. God I love those unlimited up to 5 gigs deals.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by swb ( 14022 )

        At least the tranny is hot and knows how to please you.

      • Up to 5GB at max speed. They'll throttle you back to about 300kbps (still fast enough for music streaming, which is where most of my phone data usage goes) until the end of the month if you go over 5GB on that plan, or so I've heard; my friends who have it say that's never happened to them. I'll probably switch to that plan shortly myself.

      • It's 4G up to 5 gigs and then you get unlimited 3G.
  • T-Mobile has the iPhone since ages in other countries. For instance here in Germany you could get any iPhone from T-Mobile IIRC. Don't know why that was different in the US. Probably because Apple tried to pay them through the nose. But the smartphone market in Germany is very different: very fey iPhones, many many Androids.

    • Re:...in the US. (Score:4, Informative)

      by TheNinjaroach ( 878876 ) on Friday December 07, 2012 @05:18PM (#42219965)
      T-Mobile doesn't have iPhone in the US because we have a highly fragmented spectrum for cell phones. T-Mobile uses GSM, which is compatible, but in the US it's on an entirely different set of frequencies that the iPhone doesn't support.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday December 07, 2012 @05:45PM (#42220221)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • I was wondering why my iPhone started getting 3G signal. I have a factory unlocked iPhone on T-Mobile w/ unlimited everything for $45 a month (about $47 after taxes). I thought I was going to get HSPA+ with it, but that never seems to work. In any event, I am saving so much money over my previous plan that the phone has basically paid for itself in 1 year. I am hoping to hold onto it for 5 years if possible.

      • T-Mobile doesn't have iPhone in the US because we have a highly fragmented spectrum for cell phones. T-Mobile uses GSM, which is compatible, but in the US it's on an entirely different set of frequencies that the iPhone doesn't support.

        That's not correct. T-Mobile uses the 1900 band in the USA and all the iPhones support that fine. It's trivial to find accounts of people with unlocked iPhones who currently use them on T-Mobile in the USA. T-Mobile doesn't have the iPhone in the USA because they were basically unwilling and perhaps unable to pay Apple's exorbitant prices to get permissions to sell it.

      • Then how is it that the top-left corner of my iPhone 4s says, “T-Mobile”?

        I've had it for over a year. Bought an unlocked phone at an Apple store, stopped at the local T-Mobile store on my way home, oohed and aahed about it with the cute girl while she rummaged in the drawer for a micro-SIM, and made my first call on it in the parking lot before finishing the drive home.

        It's with a fantastic pre-paid plan, too. I pay $2 / day on any day that I make even one phone call or transmit even one byte of

      • Weird. My son's iPhone 2 and my wife's iPhone 3GS both seemed to work as good as any of my Android based phones on T-Mobile's network in the USA. Am I missing something here?

      • A close friend, who uses Tmobile in the SF Bay Area for the Nokia N900, got an iPhone 4S half a year ago. Both phones were bought at the non-subsidized expensive price, unlocked. Where the N900 had been getting 3G signals, in the same location the iPhone 4S would get EDGE only. Siri would be useless. Apparently the iPhone 3G was not on the same frequency as the N900 3G.

        That changed about a month ago, where suddenly during the long daily commute up the peninsula (between Silicon Valley and San Francisco)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jbolden ( 176878 )

      T-Mobile abroad and T-Mobile in the USA have little in common other than a brand name. They used to be more related but they have forked.

  • Moving away from subsidies (Score:4, Insightful)

    by earlzdotnet ( 2788729 ) on Friday December 07, 2012 @05:12PM (#42219907)
    What's mentioned in TFA, but not TFS is the news they include that they will be moving away from subsidies. This I think is an awesome improvement! Think about it, "I can pay $30 less per month, put that into a savings account and every 2 years get a good phone... or I can get a good phone now and pay an extra $50 per month for a worse plan and if I mess up it ruins my credit" They mention changing subsidies to a "payment plan" type of thing, which is really what it should be considered. I completely welcome this change.

    As a result, they provide their phones with minimal margins because they'll make it up in monthly fees(for the service). I bought my wife a phone with T-Mobile and I was amazed I could get a relatively decent Android phone for $200. Try finding a decent smart phone from another carrier at that price. Also, her plan is flat $50/month with no contract, and unlimited everything. Last time I looked at AT&T, the equivalent plan was $110/month and a similar low-mid-range phone was $450 without a contract

    • I fully support your message. I live in Tucson, Az, and recently switched from Sprint to T-mobile.

      I am much, much happier with T-mobile than I was with Sprint. The big motivator for me getting a smartphone was the ability to stream Pandora while jogging and biking, but with Sprint, even in wide open outdoors situations in the heart of Tucson, I rarely was able to stream at even the lowest quality settings. Tethering my desktop while inside the house was out of the question. Speedtest.net results typically

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rich0 ( 548339 )

      Yup, I switched to their unsubsidized plan a few months ago. If you buy new phones it works out about the same with the monthly phone payments. However, it gives you a LOT more flexibility around phone purchases. I can buy any unlocked GSM phone I want, including an iPhone. I can buy a Nexus 4 for $350. I can keep a phone for 3 years and save more, or I can upgrade a phone every year and sell the old one each time.

      Their plans are really cheap too. I'm paying $120/mo for four lines with 2x2GB data plan

  • Keep that pack of rabid data slurpers off my carrier! (and get the kids off my lawn while you're at it)

    • This was the first thought I had. How long before they can no longer claim to offer "unlimited" data?

      • As long as they want, assuming they don't take on the accounting practices of the bigger carriers. Companies like Verizon and AT&T make a ridiculous profit on their data service, yet they cry over losing even one cent. Here's my math to back it up.

        I was bored one day and decided to do some digging on those data overages the cell phone carriers love to charge. $.10/MB seems like a fairly common rate, but what people don't realize is, that works out to about $33,000 per Mbps per month. The amount of
        • Made a typo. Ignore my extra zero. "1000 cents" and ".94 cents" respectively when comparing the normal data rate. Still ridiculous at $3300/Mbps. Would you cry over losing a slight edge on a 1000x markup?

  • A certain number of customers (Score:3)

    by game kid ( 805301 ) on Friday December 07, 2012 @05:19PM (#42219977) Homepage

    T-Mobile USA CEO John Legere said while speaking at the Deutsche Telekom conference Thursday that it will carry the iPhone and will offer it in a different way. 'What was missing? A certain number of customers wouldn't come to the store if we didn't have the iPhone,' Legere said.

    Now I wonder if any of those customers acted like this [youtube.com].

  • Great! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Now if I could make a phone call longer than two minutes without being dropped...

  • The summary doesn't even mention what's different about T-Mobiles plans! No subsidies to buy the phone up front (so you'll pay 600-850 for your iPhone, depending on the model) and this (should) result in cheaper monthly bills. I hope it works out!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

      They will let you pay it off over the course of two years though.

      So the price is really the same just a discount once the phone is paid for.

      • True, but there are a few benefits that the other carriers don't have.
        1. You can pay a higher down payment to reduce your monthly payment.
        2. You can pay off your balance early to reduce your monthly payment.
        3. You can upgrade at any time.

  • Too late... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 07, 2012 @05:33PM (#42220103)

    The world has moved to Windows Phone.

  • Frogs jumping over frogs and toads.

    T-mobile just happens to have better coverage here.
    If you get an unlocked iPhone they can give you edge
    coverage. I have started using an old Samsung 3G
    phone for voice. Data is WiFi for now but I can tell
    you that as soon as I am contract free I will be looking
    hard at changing 100% from the A&someting company.

    Smart phones are not smart choices for folk that want a
    phone

  • There goes my blazing-fast 4G... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by barlevg ( 2111272 ) on Friday December 07, 2012 @05:44PM (#42220213)
    Now I gotta share my mobile bandwidth with Siri-using morons ("Siri, is that rain?"). Also guessing my days of unlimited data are numbered.
  • This is a freaking ad, and it's obvious now that someone at Apple is paying one of the editors (same goes for Microsoft), or they both have someone they employ who is an editor...can we please see stories that are actually news and not freaking ads, please?!?!???!?

  • T-Mobile is also going to end handset subsidies which translates into everyone paying MSRP for all handsets all the time. The upside of this is that it will kill most handset sales since few of them are even laughably close in value to the full retail price. b

  • I've got an Android tablet on T-mobile (Galaxy Tab 7 Plus). I've had it for about a year now. Before that I had the Droid Triumph, the Droid, and the G1. For all of these except the G1, I've had to find custom firmware. The pre-installed, unremovable shovelware is annoying, but the lack of updates is unacceptable. The iPhone 3GS was released 3.5 years ago and will run iOS 6, no waiting for the carrier to release the update.

    Even with Samsung, supposedly a good Android manufacturer, my device hasn't received
    • As I understand it, this is the big selling point for the Nexus line...

    • This is the problem that Nexus devices are designed to solve. You get updates directly from Google as soon as they're released; no carrier to get in the way. (Well, unless you're on a CDMA carrier, since they still withhold the signed CDMA drivers. Which is why Google has stopped releasing CDMA versions of Nexus devices).

      So buy a Nexus device directly from Google Play, hook it up to an uber-cheap T-Mobile prepaid plan, and you'll be up-to-date for as long as your hardware can physically run the latest versi

      • That would address most of the problems I have, except for the lack of accessories.

        There's one other reason I want to get an iOS device. There's an app called Coaster that's made for iOS and Android. However, the app developer blocked it from Android tablet devices. I don't have a smartphone, just a tablet with data. The app will work on an iPad Mini, but even after I tried to hack my tablet to run smartphone-only software, it refused to install. I tried contacting the developer to no avail. So yes, apps ar
  • They are switching to LTE, but selling non-LTE phones. And, my understanding is they are pushing current users onto only one of their frequency bands to make room. Maybe I'll be back when my new Verizon plan runs out in 2 years and things are settled.

  • TMO decided to stop subsidizing phones in 2013, making Value Plans the norm and letting us see the true cost.

    In that scenario. This is easy.

  • They've talked plenty about refarming over the AT&T(1900 HSPA+) bands, but not many places have been converted.

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