T-Mobile and the iPhone: 7% of the way to becoming friends

T-Mobile USA iPhone users can start rejoicing this summer – at least a few of them can. T-Mobile will complete its planned conversion from GSM to HSPA+ on 2,500 of its cell sites this July, T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray revealed at the NGNM conference. The upgrade will put its mobile broadband network firmly in the PCS band in 7 percent of its network, which makes it compatible with all current versions of the iPhone. That doesn’t mean T-Mobile will start selling the iPhone directly, but some of the million-plus current unlocked or hacked iPhones on T-Mo’s network may soon start seeing a “4G” icon popping up on their notification bars, as well as find their current slow-poke Edge speeds jump up to multiple megabits per second.