iPhone To T-Mobile This Year – Wind Next?

The cult of Mac is reporting today that the iPhone will be coming to T-Mobile.

Referencing a source high up in T-Mobile’s organization, they claim an 80% chance that iPhones will be available on T-Mobile by the end of Q3 this year (late September). Deutsche Telekom, carrier of the iPhone in Germany and T-Mobile’s parent company, was rumoured to have influence in the deal.

This could be very good news for Wind Mobile as their relatively thin offering of phones is due to them being on the 3G-AWS band, which is slightly different from the standard 3G bands that most carriers operate on. T-Mobile is also on the AWS band, which means that if the iPhone is going to work for T-Mobile, it will work for Wind.

The iPhone 4 doesn’t list the AWS band in its specs, but it could be that the phone is indeed capable of operation on the appropriate frequencies and that they just aren’t listed. Unlocking the phone (which hasn’t been done yet), and trying a T-Mobile (or Wind) SIM would be the first test.

Many have suggested that Verizon would be the next likely candidate once the AT&T exclusivity contract runs out, but for now Verizon runs a CDMA network, while the iPhone is a GSM phone. However, Verizon is upgrading to LTE in the fall, and it looks like it will be a GSM network, so this CDMA argument could be moot.