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T-Mobile didn't get the iPhone because of its unique 3G bands

by Kelly Hodgkins Jan 11th 2012 at 9:00AM

T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm talked to Ina Fried of AllThingsD at CES this week about a variety of topics, including the iPhone. Humm confirmed what we all assumed -- T-Mobile didn't get the iPhone because of its unique 3G technology. "The key reason we didn't have the iPhone in the past is we are on different band than globally the market was," said Humm.

Unlike other carriers which use the 850, 900, 1900 or 2100 MHz frequencies, T-Mobile uses the 1700/2100 MHz AWS band for its 3G. Handsets must have a specific chipset with this unique 3G UMTS band to operate on T-Mobile's network. While many manufacturers use this particular chipset and produce phones specifically for T-Mobile, Apple does not.

Humm is hopeful this will change, and T-Mobile will eventually get the iPhone. Humm points out that technology changes all the time, and future chipsets may support more bands. Pentaband chipsets, which support all European and US 3G UMTS bands including T-Mobile's, already exist, but only a few phones use this technology. Humm concedes that, in the end, the decision to offer an AWS iPhone for T-Mobile is in Apple's hands.

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T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm talked to Ina Fried of AllThingsD at CES this week about a variety of topics, including the iPhone. Humm...
 

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Mark Fuller

If T-Mobile doesn't get their act together by November, I'm gone. I have a HTC Sensation now, replacing the junk MyTouch 4G that wouldn't even get email attachments, but it's no iPhone and the Android Market is nothing compared to the App Store. T-Mobile doesn't deliver 4G in my area consistently and a lot of my experience is on Edge. If the ICS update for my phone doesn't make it amazing, I'll go to ATT.

January 11 2012 at 2:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Mark Fuller's comment
Farris Khayyat

Yep, I'm hoping that T-Mob gets their act together too. I ditched the iPhone because I wanted the "openness" of Android.... little did I know what that meant: MyTouch 4G downloads that are REALLY fast... when I have service, and battery life that I could realistically measure in minutes, rather than the days that my iPhone had.

January 11 2012 at 3:38 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Farris Khayyat's comment
Mark Fuller

Nice try troll. The model of Mytouch 4GI has was discontinued. T-Mobile has replace two of the five phones I bought for may family in November of 2010 with new models and we've had a total of five replacement phones in 2011. If you ditched your iPhone, can I have it?

I'm sure that every possible app you want is in the market place too. You forgot that troll point.

January 11 2012 at 8:00 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down
Farris Khayyat

...no, I'm not trolling, I actually really miss my iPhone. The Android app store SUCKS, and there have been no upsides to the MyTouch I got last February. My comment could have been misread, I suppose, but I was trying to say how much my MyTouch sucked compared to my old iPhone 3G.

January 11 2012 at 10:23 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down
Terri Smith

T-Mobile needs to get their stuff in order. Not being able to carry the iPhone puts them right where they are right now, at the bottom of wireless carriers.

January 11 2012 at 1:01 PM Report abuse +2 rate up rate down Reply
ravedog

Bad grammar on post title... "it's" is closest to "iPhone" which suggests that it's the iPhone that is unique on 3G bands - when in fact it's T-Mobile that is unique.

January 11 2012 at 11:03 AM Report abuse -1 rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to ravedog's comment
shanecbryson

You didn't do well in English, did you?

January 11 2012 at 2:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to shanecbryson's comment
xxp84

Shane, he's right (although there is a stray, autocorrect? apostrophe in his sentence), what he is saying is that it's ambiguous as is.
"T-Mobile didn't get the iPhone because of the iPhone's unique 3G bands"
"T-Mobile didn't get the iPhone because of T-Mobile's unique 3G bands"

An easy way around this would be: "T-Mobile didn't get the iPhone because of THEIR unique 3G bands". Or being specific: "T-Mobile didn't get the iPhone because of the carrier's unique 3G bands"

January 12 2012 at 8:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down
CrisisDog

I'm still a fan of OS X, but I'm over iOS because of this backward thinking by Apple. I have both a Samsung Vibrant and a HTC MyTouch 4G on T-Mobile, and an Asus Transformer. It works for me, and the 4G speeds and "free" tethering are a plus...

January 11 2012 at 10:29 AM Report abuse -2 rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to CrisisDog's comment
Septhinox

How is it backwards thinking? T-mobile chose to use a chip different from the majority of the world. Was Apple supposed to include a chip that could have raised its cost just for T-Mobile? bwahahahaha Seriously?

January 11 2012 at 12:42 PM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Septhinox's comment
xxp84

This is really nobody's fault, other than the US Government for not standardizing bands 15 years ago like they did in Europe and making sure these allocations were done in an orderly manner.

Fact is, T-Mobile HAD to "choose" the goofy AWS band because that was the only additional band up for grabs, and some of the standard bands used in Europe are used for stupid things here (like the 900MHz band they use in Europe is used here for cordless phones).

And Apple probably had to leave out the T-Mobile band because it would have driven up their costs, like you said.

January 12 2012 at 8:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down
shanecbryson

This is not an Apple issue, this is a T-Mobile issue. T-Mobile uses a pretty scarcely used frequency that makes it very counter intuitive and not cost effective for chip set suppliers to make chips in large numbers that are compatible with that frequency. Apple has contracts with these suppliers and without a large enough incentive (which T-mobile is no where close enough to being) they won't switch or shell out millions to change that. So backwards thinking on Apple's part? No, not at all. Pretty forward thinking business wise, and a poor choice on T-Mobiles part for not having a more compatible network.

January 11 2012 at 2:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Shannon Doherty

I don't understand, why couldn't Apple just include the chip? What was stopping them? I would think the benefits would have outweighed the costs, but I must obviously be missing something.

January 11 2012 at 10:16 AM Report abuse -1 rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Shannon Doherty's comment
digitalsedition

Apple is pretty married to its suppliers unless there is a strong reason to change. When their radio provider provides the next generation radio for the new phone, if it supports the TMobile bands then it will be TMobile compatible. If not, it won't. Sounds like you're waiting on Qualcomm.

January 11 2012 at 10:46 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to digitalsedition's comment
Shannon Doherty

So keeping the same radio supplier is more important than offering the phone on a whole new carrier, being able to be on all four major carriers? Not sure I see that but I guess so.

January 11 2012 at 4:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down
Shannon Doherty

Also weird that my comment gets downvoted for asking a genuine question... nowhere in there am I trolling or being disparaging.

January 12 2012 at 10:13 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Shannon Doherty's comment
xxp84

Think about it Shannon... at the time the iPhone 4S was being developed AT&T was expected to buy T-Mobile. What was the point for the past year in bothering to go out of your way to release a phone for a network that was sure to be deprecated ASAP, and where the carrier would be literally gone in a year. Once AT&T took over T-Mobile, having the T-Mobile iPhone would be exactly the same as having the AT&T iPhone. It wouldn't have been worth the money to include the bands, maybe change the chip supplier for every iPhone, and test these other bands with it. Not for access to the #4 carrier.

Now that T-Mobile may go on existing though, Apple will probably make it work with T-Mobile, as soon as the support is readily available in a chip that they would have used anyway. Before, the uncertainty about AWS's future in an "AT&T&T" merged company plus the cost just made it not worth it.

January 12 2012 at 8:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down
Andy

The GSM Galaxy Nexus is pentaband.

No reason to get an unlocked iPhone and suffer at Edge speeds, the Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.0 is really nice.

January 11 2012 at 9:18 AM Report abuse -3 rate up rate down Reply
4 replies to Andy's comment
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