Until Verizon comes out with it, I'm sticking to my iPhone 3G. Should something happen to it, I will make that decision then, and likely pay full price for the iPhone 4 device rather than get into another contract with AT&T. I've tried T-Mobile service in the past and it is even worse than AT&T. \
In Europe , both uplink and downlink are in the 2100 band. In North America, the uplink is in the 1700 band and the downlink is in the 2100 band, just because the 2100 frequency is supported for Europe does not mean it will work in T-Mobile as you require both bands (1700 and 2100) to support the North American flavour.
You are right about North America. But the so called 2100 MHz band used in Europe (and many other places around the world) uses 2100 MHz for downlink and 1900 MHz for uplink. So T-Mobile USA has the same downlink frequencies, but different uplink frequencies than the European carriers (for 3G).
People - this is SO dependent upon location. I realize that only San Francisco and NYC can lay claim to being the heart of the universe, but lets be a little realistic once in a while. You can have that same stranded problem if you are on Verizon, Sprint, or T-Mobile from Arizona to Alabama, where straying anywhere off the interstate system leaves you with one bar or less. Where my daughter goes to school in New Haven, there are big holes around town in both AT&T and Verizon coverage.
And heaven help you if Verizon does get the iPhone before FULL LTE implementation. We will hear interminable complaints about the choking of the data network, AND since CDMA uses fewer towers with larger coverage areas, there will be fewer calls that can be handled in a given area. Every carrier has pluses and minuses, and they are controlled both by footprint and usage. Think beyond your local geography for a minute.
More specifically, Wu noted that T-Mobile's 3G service (UMTS/HSPA) supports 1700 MHz and 2100 MHz frequencies while AT&T supports 850 MHz and 1900 MHz frequencies. With both the new iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS supporting 3G at the 2100 MHz frequency
Is Mr. Wu suggesting that the original 3G iPhone didn't support the 2100Mhz band? How did it work in Europe then?
Adding support for T-Mobile shouldn't be hard. The new Nokia N8 has a petraband radio, including the frequencies needed for T-Mobile USA. I'm sure whoever supplied the radio to Nokia would love to hook up with Apple.
I believe the only thing stopping Apple from partnering with additional carriers, or even talking out loud about partnering with additional carriers, is its contractual obligations.
Is Mr. Wu suggesting that the original 3G iPhone didn't support the 2100Mhz band? How did it work in Europe then?
Adding support for T-Mobile shouldn't be hard. The new Nokia N8 has a petraband[sic] radio, including the frequencies needed for T-Mobile USA. I'm sure whoever supplied the radio to Nokia would love to hook up with Apple.
It's the 900MHz spectrum that is new to the iPhone 4.
Previous iPhones worked on three UMTS/HSDPA frequencies: 850, 1900, and 2100 MHz, which are the three main GSM 3G frequencies in the Western Hemisphere. 900 MHz UMTS/HSDPA is fairly widespread in the Eastern Hemisphere, including in New Zealand -- the only wireless provider who directly sells the iPhone here in NZ, Vodafone, operates its extended 3G network at 900 MHz. With the iPhone 3G and 3GS, this meant that the iPhone was incapable of accessing Vodafone's 3G network outside of downtown areas served by 2100 MHz networks, and it had to fall back on GPRS -- which is so slow it's nearly unusable.
And an interesting tidbit I'm about to investigate:
iPhone 4 has a pentaband antenna/chipset (although the Apple specs page only lists four, the FCC lists five bands)
edit: The unspecified band is 800MHz (Band VI). That appears to be exclusively used by Japan's NTT docomo. Since the iPhone currently only uses Softbank with 25M subs, and apparently has a 72% saturation of the Japanese smartphone market, adding NTT docomo with 60M subs would be a pretty shrewd move.
So, yes, the iPhone 4 is the 2nd phone to be pentaband, but it's to make it compatible with NTT docomo, not with T-Mobile USA. Numbers-wise that seems like the smart thing to do.
I dumped them years ago because of their lousy reception issues in and around certain parts of Los Angeles. Verizon would be the only carrier I'm interested in. T Mobile sucks and blows, or at least they used to, and I haven't heard much different so I'm wondering why Apple would want "2" lousy carriers instead of one? They're great in Europe for coverage because they are owned by Deutsche Telekom, but I wouldn't want them in the States.
Same exact story here... in LA, T Mobile didn't work at my old office while AT&T and phones from every other company would. Then I wound up in an emergency situation and while trying to handle it my phone kept dropping calls. After getting AT&T my reception was still often whack, but far better than T-mobile. This was during iPhone 2G time, pre-T Mobile doing 3G. Oh, and their home wifi phone solution sucked.
I'd be interested to know what T Mobile's reception in LA is like now that they've been improving the network with 3G, but I'm not going to bet Apple goes with another spotty network that's going to further hurt the iPhone's image as "great with everything but being a phone" until they can go multi-carrier including Verizon and/or Sprint.
Logically, if they wanted T Mobile they'd have added T Mo's 3G Band for iPhone 4, but not made the deal until ready to. Unless they can software unlock it later.
Since Apple is already working with T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom) in Germany it would be pretty natural for them to head on over, especially considering they are GSM. Verizon Won't happen since they already got android and really don't need iPhone any more.
Apple will never create a CDMA version for Verizon. Verizon needs to quickly build out its 4G network.....it has to be large enough so that any iPhone can get complete national coverage. This won't happen on Verizon until 2012-2014.
True nation-wide coverage of LTE won't be until after 2014. Not to the degree required to support a phone that only works on LTE. There would be far too many coverage gaps. So unless you think there won't be a Verizon iPhone until 2015, any LTE iPhone would also need to support CDMA. And if that is the case, Apple might as well make a CDMA version now since they'll eventually need to be able to support that standard.
Where I live (upstate of SC) T-Mobile's service is great. I was with a regional carrier (Suncom) for years before they were bought out by T-Mobile. The reason I don't have an iPhone is because I don't want to switch to a different carrier.
As mentioned earlier, your experience will depend on your location. However, I wouldn't mind seeing iPhone coming to T-Mobile. I'm already here, so it would be a no-brainer for me.
That doesn't mean it's still not a no-brainer. T-Mobile USA with slightly over 1/3 the user base of Verizon for adding this tiny and inexpensive 1700MHz band chip to the phone compared to making an entirely new phone that supports CDMA-based networks from top to bottom.
The question isn't which is the easiest and cheapest to support, the question is why haven't they supported it yet? Apple will sometimes add HW that they don't advertise for whatever reason. I suppose it's possible the iPhone 4 has a fifth UMTS band to support 1700MHz but it's simply not listed because they are bound to AT&T until a certain date. We'll know by the 25th when iFixit does a teardown.
Re: the portion I bolded...why do people keep insisting that a CDMA phone would be an "entirely new phone"? I'm pretty sure the screen, battery, CPU, cameras, connectors, and the majority of the OS and the applications would be identical. It's not as if they need to design an whole new device.
Yes, there will be parts that will need to be different (cellular radio, antennas, the parts of the OS that interact with this new hardware). But I'm pretty sure if Motorola, Nokia, etc, and figure it out, so can Apple.
ATT represents, what, about 1/3 of the iPhone sales? Verizon is bigger than ATT. Ergo, Verizon has the potential to expand Apple's customer base by over 1/3. A CDMA iPhone could also be deployed on Sprint, adding another significant chunk of customers. Assuming Apple's supply chain can keep up, the technical design hurdles are minor compared to the increased market share.
And as this analyst stated, and I've stated many times, heading off Android before it gets a foothold (remember their 70% loyalty rating in the recent AI article?) is a strong business reason for getting into as much of the market as possible, sooner rather than later.
Re: the portion I bolded...why do people keep insisting that a CDMA phone would be an "entirely new phone"? I'm pretty sure the screen, battery, CPU, cameras, connectors, and the majority of the OS and the applications would be identical. It's not as if they need to design an whole new device.
Of course. It's short for entirely new phone hardware which makes it a completely new phone model blah blah blah. That should all be self evident unless you can think of an argument that the screen,, CPU, battery, cameras, etc wouldn't be the same.
The court docs you are referring to prove no such thing. Contracts are modified all the time. All the docs prove is that at the time of the court proceedings there was such a contract. There has been plenty of instances why a contract modification may have occurred. For instance, people will remember that Apple used to be able to sell the phone outright and the user was supposed to then activate the AT &T service through iTunes. This was an industry first that Apple touted.
Millions of people bought the phone through Apple, and never activated the phone through AT&T using iTunes. Instead they just unlocked the phone and used T-Mobile. The result was AT&T lost a lot of sales, but Apple gained sales it wouldn't have had if it wasn't easy to use a different carrier.
Eventually, Apple dropped the iTunes registration method which mostly benefited AT&T. AT&T activation took place at the point of sale. There undoubtedly was a contract modification at play here. The question is what did Apple get for allowing this change to take place. Further, for a while AT&T was scrambling to provide proper service. Apple likely could have received a contract modification out of AT&T over that.
Further, there could be multiple contracts at play and the 2012 date can refer to just one aspect of the contract. For instance, maybe Apple is prohibited from selling a phone on a CDMA network in the US until 2012 (e.g. Verizon) , but is OK to strike a deal on another GSM network after a shorter period of time (e.g. T-Mobile). At the time the iPhone came out, one such rumor suggested that was the case. Apple wouldn't make a CDMA phone IN THE US for five years, but was able to make the iPhone available on another GSM network sooner.
Quote:
Originally Posted by charlituna
We won't see anything that supports T-Mobile until the contracts (which court docs proved are until 2012) are up.
Engadget says "First, a factoid: America and Canada are just two of an extremely small group of nations that support CDMA."
This ever so important observation is relevant to the way Apple are thinking about which network they will add next.
In Canada, the two CDMA networks (Bell and Telus) have converted to GSM for 3G. They launched the iPhones after that. And both networks are slowly converting their customers to GSM as their contracts expire and they get new phones. So CDMA is really on the way out up here. Given that we have 3 year contracts up here, it'll take a bit. But by mid to end 2012, CDMA for all intents and purposes will be finished in Canada.
The new big deal in Canada is the AWS band (same as T-Mo USA). All the new entrants with the significantly lower plan prices use this band. And the Big 3 also have spectrum on this band that they will start employing at some point in the future when their current bands get congested. So an AWS iPhone would be a big deal up here.
Nothing would be better than to get an AWS iPhone on Wind Mobile for example. Right now, they offer unlimited nation-wide calling (no time of day restrictions), unlimited messaging, unlimited data (with tethering), voicemail and caller ID for $80. No contract (you have to pay full price for the phone up front). Until that happens though, all the new entrants will be promoting Android phones to compete with the iPhone on the Big 3 carriers.
And personally, as nice as the iPhone is, it's not worth a bill over $100 bucks a month on a plan that still carries restrictions, and comes with a 3 year contract (yes you read that right...3 years up here). For me, a Nexus One on Wind is a great combination.
Given the choice of VZ, T-Mobile or AT&T I'd stick with AT&T.
VZ: On the current CDMA network no simultaneous voice/data. Deal breaker for me. I use this feature just about every single work day to amuse myself while on long conference calls. If I could rely on having wifi everywhere I wouldn't care but the possibility of sitting around for 1-2 hours on a call and not even being able to check my e-mail is terrifying to me. I'd definitely take another look at VZ when LTE is deployed in my area.
T-Mobile: Coverage is the big deal breaker here. They seem to have good policies but even based on their own coverage maps, which tend to be overly optimistic, I would have to drive 25 miles to get 3G coverage. I do think this is Apple's more realistic alternative in the short term. It would definitely help iPhone users in metro areas where T-Mobile tends to have good coverage.
Sprint: Same problem as VZ with voice/data. I think their choice to go with WIMAX for 4G is going to severely limit choice in handsets going forward. Probably no chance in hell of seeing a CDMA/WiMAX iPhone. Not a big fan of their policy to force owners of 4G phones to pay $10 extra even though 98% of them can't use the service. That's just lame. I certainly would be willing to pay extra for 4G but only if I can actually use it in I dunno 50% of the country? I don't think that's expecting too much for $10/month.
Going to all the trouble to make a special GSM handset for t-mobile would be idiotic. If it were so easy and appealing to Apple, they'd have done it already.
Verizon, on the other hand, would give Apple millions upon millions of buyers and segway into LTE/4G within a year. Not to mention Sprint and a bunch of Canadian, Mexican and South American carriers run identical CDMA networks to Verizon's.
My vote is that the iPhone for CDMA comes out this year, or next summer when Verizon rolls out LTE-capable handsets. How perfect would that be for the iPhone to debut on Verizon as they launch their soon-to-be-best-4G-ever on 700mhz (coincidentally the same frequency that AT&T will use).
Comments
In Europe , both uplink and downlink are in the 2100 band. In North America, the uplink is in the 1700 band and the downlink is in the 2100 band, just because the 2100 frequency is supported for Europe does not mean it will work in T-Mobile as you require both bands (1700 and 2100) to support the North American flavour.
You are right about North America. But the so called 2100 MHz band used in Europe (and many other places around the world) uses 2100 MHz for downlink and 1900 MHz for uplink. So T-Mobile USA has the same downlink frequencies, but different uplink frequencies than the European carriers (for 3G).
And heaven help you if Verizon does get the iPhone before FULL LTE implementation. We will hear interminable complaints about the choking of the data network, AND since CDMA uses fewer towers with larger coverage areas, there will be fewer calls that can be handled in a given area. Every carrier has pluses and minuses, and they are controlled both by footprint and usage. Think beyond your local geography for a minute.
Such common sense. You new around here, eh?
A Shaw Wu prediction? Just forget it!
Shaw Wu is as credible as a monkey throwing darts while blindfolded.
More specifically, Wu noted that T-Mobile's 3G service (UMTS/HSPA) supports 1700 MHz and 2100 MHz frequencies while AT&T supports 850 MHz and 1900 MHz frequencies. With both the new iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS supporting 3G at the 2100 MHz frequency
Is Mr. Wu suggesting that the original 3G iPhone didn't support the 2100Mhz band? How did it work in Europe then?
Adding support for T-Mobile shouldn't be hard. The new Nokia N8 has a petraband radio, including the frequencies needed for T-Mobile USA. I'm sure whoever supplied the radio to Nokia would love to hook up with Apple.
Is Mr. Wu suggesting that the original 3G iPhone didn't support the 2100Mhz band? How did it work in Europe then?
Adding support for T-Mobile shouldn't be hard. The new Nokia N8 has a petraband[sic] radio, including the frequencies needed for T-Mobile USA. I'm sure whoever supplied the radio to Nokia would love to hook up with Apple.
It's the 900MHz spectrum that is new to the iPhone 4.
Here is an excerpt from TUAW: And an interesting tidbit I'm about to investigate:
edit: The unspecified band is 800MHz (Band VI). That appears to be exclusively used by Japan's NTT docomo. Since the iPhone currently only uses Softbank with 25M subs, and apparently has a 72% saturation of the Japanese smartphone market, adding NTT docomo with 60M subs would be a pretty shrewd move.So, yes, the iPhone 4 is the 2nd phone to be pentaband, but it's to make it compatible with NTT docomo, not with T-Mobile USA. Numbers-wise that seems like the smart thing to do.
I dumped them years ago because of their lousy reception issues in and around certain parts of Los Angeles. Verizon would be the only carrier I'm interested in. T Mobile sucks and blows, or at least they used to, and I haven't heard much different so I'm wondering why Apple would want "2" lousy carriers instead of one? They're great in Europe for coverage because they are owned by Deutsche Telekom, but I wouldn't want them in the States.
Same exact story here... in LA, T Mobile didn't work at my old office while AT&T and phones from every other company would. Then I wound up in an emergency situation and while trying to handle it my phone kept dropping calls. After getting AT&T my reception was still often whack, but far better than T-mobile. This was during iPhone 2G time, pre-T Mobile doing 3G. Oh, and their home wifi phone solution sucked.
I'd be interested to know what T Mobile's reception in LA is like now that they've been improving the network with 3G, but I'm not going to bet Apple goes with another spotty network that's going to further hurt the iPhone's image as "great with everything but being a phone" until they can go multi-carrier including Verizon and/or Sprint.
Logically, if they wanted T Mobile they'd have added T Mo's 3G Band for iPhone 4, but not made the deal until ready to. Unless they can software unlock it later.
T-Mobile can utilize the same iPhone hardware.
Apple will never create a CDMA version for Verizon. Verizon needs to quickly build out its 4G network.....it has to be large enough so that any iPhone can get complete national coverage. This won't happen on Verizon until 2012-2014.
True nation-wide coverage of LTE won't be until after 2014. Not to the degree required to support a phone that only works on LTE. There would be far too many coverage gaps. So unless you think there won't be a Verizon iPhone until 2015, any LTE iPhone would also need to support CDMA. And if that is the case, Apple might as well make a CDMA version now since they'll eventually need to be able to support that standard.
As mentioned earlier, your experience will depend on your location. However, I wouldn't mind seeing iPhone coming to T-Mobile. I'm already here, so it would be a no-brainer for me.
You choose the wrong Wiki link.That doesn't mean it's still not a no-brainer. T-Mobile USA with slightly over 1/3 the user base of Verizon for adding this tiny and inexpensive 1700MHz band chip to the phone compared to making an entirely new phone that supports CDMA-based networks from top to bottom.
The question isn't which is the easiest and cheapest to support, the question is why haven't they supported it yet? Apple will sometimes add HW that they don't advertise for whatever reason. I suppose it's possible the iPhone 4 has a fifth UMTS band to support 1700MHz but it's simply not listed because they are bound to AT&T until a certain date. We'll know by the 25th when iFixit does a teardown.
Re: the portion I bolded...why do people keep insisting that a CDMA phone would be an "entirely new phone"? I'm pretty sure the screen, battery, CPU, cameras, connectors, and the majority of the OS and the applications would be identical. It's not as if they need to design an whole new device.
Yes, there will be parts that will need to be different (cellular radio, antennas, the parts of the OS that interact with this new hardware). But I'm pretty sure if Motorola, Nokia, etc, and figure it out, so can Apple.
ATT represents, what, about 1/3 of the iPhone sales? Verizon is bigger than ATT. Ergo, Verizon has the potential to expand Apple's customer base by over 1/3. A CDMA iPhone could also be deployed on Sprint, adding another significant chunk of customers. Assuming Apple's supply chain can keep up, the technical design hurdles are minor compared to the increased market share.
And as this analyst stated, and I've stated many times, heading off Android before it gets a foothold (remember their 70% loyalty rating in the recent AI article?) is a strong business reason for getting into as much of the market as possible, sooner rather than later.
Re: the portion I bolded...why do people keep insisting that a CDMA phone would be an "entirely new phone"? I'm pretty sure the screen, battery, CPU, cameras, connectors, and the majority of the OS and the applications would be identical. It's not as if they need to design an whole new device.
Of course. It's short for entirely new phone hardware which makes it a completely new phone model blah blah blah. That should all be self evident unless you can think of an argument that the screen,, CPU, battery, cameras, etc wouldn't be the same.
Millions of people bought the phone through Apple, and never activated the phone through AT&T using iTunes. Instead they just unlocked the phone and used T-Mobile. The result was AT&T lost a lot of sales, but Apple gained sales it wouldn't have had if it wasn't easy to use a different carrier.
Eventually, Apple dropped the iTunes registration method which mostly benefited AT&T. AT&T activation took place at the point of sale. There undoubtedly was a contract modification at play here. The question is what did Apple get for allowing this change to take place. Further, for a while AT&T was scrambling to provide proper service. Apple likely could have received a contract modification out of AT&T over that.
Further, there could be multiple contracts at play and the 2012 date can refer to just one aspect of the contract. For instance, maybe Apple is prohibited from selling a phone on a CDMA network in the US until 2012 (e.g. Verizon) , but is OK to strike a deal on another GSM network after a shorter period of time (e.g. T-Mobile). At the time the iPhone came out, one such rumor suggested that was the case. Apple wouldn't make a CDMA phone IN THE US for five years, but was able to make the iPhone available on another GSM network sooner.
We won't see anything that supports T-Mobile until the contracts (which court docs proved are until 2012) are up.
Engadget says "First, a factoid: America and Canada are just two of an extremely small group of nations that support CDMA."
This ever so important observation is relevant to the way Apple are thinking about which network they will add next.
In Canada, the two CDMA networks (Bell and Telus) have converted to GSM for 3G. They launched the iPhones after that. And both networks are slowly converting their customers to GSM as their contracts expire and they get new phones. So CDMA is really on the way out up here. Given that we have 3 year contracts up here, it'll take a bit. But by mid to end 2012, CDMA for all intents and purposes will be finished in Canada.
The new big deal in Canada is the AWS band (same as T-Mo USA). All the new entrants with the significantly lower plan prices use this band. And the Big 3 also have spectrum on this band that they will start employing at some point in the future when their current bands get congested. So an AWS iPhone would be a big deal up here.
Nothing would be better than to get an AWS iPhone on Wind Mobile for example. Right now, they offer unlimited nation-wide calling (no time of day restrictions), unlimited messaging, unlimited data (with tethering), voicemail and caller ID for $80. No contract (you have to pay full price for the phone up front). Until that happens though, all the new entrants will be promoting Android phones to compete with the iPhone on the Big 3 carriers.
And personally, as nice as the iPhone is, it's not worth a bill over $100 bucks a month on a plan that still carries restrictions, and comes with a 3 year contract (yes you read that right...3 years up here). For me, a Nexus One on Wind is a great combination.
VZ: On the current CDMA network no simultaneous voice/data. Deal breaker for me. I use this feature just about every single work day to amuse myself while on long conference calls. If I could rely on having wifi everywhere I wouldn't care but the possibility of sitting around for 1-2 hours on a call and not even being able to check my e-mail is terrifying to me. I'd definitely take another look at VZ when LTE is deployed in my area.
T-Mobile: Coverage is the big deal breaker here. They seem to have good policies but even based on their own coverage maps, which tend to be overly optimistic, I would have to drive 25 miles to get 3G coverage. I do think this is Apple's more realistic alternative in the short term. It would definitely help iPhone users in metro areas where T-Mobile tends to have good coverage.
Sprint: Same problem as VZ with voice/data. I think their choice to go with WIMAX for 4G is going to severely limit choice in handsets going forward. Probably no chance in hell of seeing a CDMA/WiMAX iPhone. Not a big fan of their policy to force owners of 4G phones to pay $10 extra even though 98% of them can't use the service. That's just lame. I certainly would be willing to pay extra for 4G but only if I can actually use it in I dunno 50% of the country? I don't think that's expecting too much for $10/month.
Verizon, on the other hand, would give Apple millions upon millions of buyers and segway into LTE/4G within a year. Not to mention Sprint and a bunch of Canadian, Mexican and South American carriers run identical CDMA networks to Verizon's.
My vote is that the iPhone for CDMA comes out this year, or next summer when Verizon rolls out LTE-capable handsets. How perfect would that be for the iPhone to debut on Verizon as they launch their soon-to-be-best-4G-ever on 700mhz (coincidentally the same frequency that AT&T will use).