Edible Apple

Despite seemingly credible reports that T-Mobile would get the iPhone 4S, T-Mobile today remains the only major US carrier without Apple’s heralded smartphone.

And T-Mobile will be the first to admit that it has had an effect on their bottom line.

Just a few weeks ago, T-Mobile released their earnings report for Q4 2012 and singled out the iPhone as the reason for mass customer defection.

Sequentially, the decline in branded net contract customers was driven primarily by higher branded contract deactivations as a result of the launch of the iPhone 4S by three nationwide competitors in mid-October.

And a few weeks before that, T-Mobile CMO Cole Brodman went so far as to apologize to the T-Mobile customer base for not carrying the iPhone.

Yesterday, T-Mobile put up a Q&A with its CTO Neville Ray where he expounded on a number of questions, most of which related to T-Mobile’s 4G expansion.

Of note was this blurb,

Will refarming make your network compatible with the iPhone?  And will you stop offering 2G services? A nice side benefit of the refarming effort is that our 4G network will be compatible with a broader range of devices, including the iPhone. The other important benefit of our network modernization effort is the coverage improvements it will deliver, especially when it comes to in-home coverage.

T-Mobile is investing $4 billion to modernize their network and they plan to rollout LTE services in 2013.

via T-Mobile