T-Mobile CEO John Legere
After announcing a deal in December to finally bring Apple’s iPhone to its network in 2013, U.S. mobile carrier T-Mobile’s CEO revealed Tuesday that his company already serves nearly 2 million iPhones. John Legere, the carrier’s CEO, made the remarks during a management keynote for its parent company Deutsche Telekom, as reported by TmoNews (that’s short for “T-Mobile News”, and not related to The Mac Observer).
In addition to the already large number of iPhones unofficially operating on its network, Mr. Legere claimed that demand has increased since the company announced its plans to officially bring iDevices to the network this year. According to Mr. Legere, an average of over 100,000 new iPhones are activated on T-Mobile each month and over 200,000 were added to the network since the company’s December announcement.
T-Mobile is the last major U.S. carrier to not officially carry the iPhone, although it has long been a haven for customers with unlocked iDevices who preferred not to sign with another carrier just to get Apple's flagship product.
As the iPhone has evolved, however, T-Mobile and its unofficial iPhone customers have had difficulty keeping up. T-Mobile is planning an ambitious 4G rollout in the next two years, but its plans are being implemented slowly while rivals Verizon and AT&T have greatly expanded their 4G LTE coverage. In addition, 3G spectrum incompatibilities prevented 3G iPhone users from accessing data via the faster network, although the carrier now says that it is “iPhone ready” for at least 3G devices.
The schedule for the official rollout of Apple iDevices on T-Mobile is still unknown aside from the company’s “2013” reference in its press release.