With T-Mobile and Apple finally agreeing to sell the iPhone 5, the carrier is planning an update for customers already utilizing an unlocked iPhone.
Since the iPhone's inception in 2007, Apple has launched their smartphone with AT&T and eventually added Sprint and Verizon Wireless. T-Mobile, however, was left on the sidelines.
On March 26, T-Mobile finally announced they will be the fourth U.S. carrier to sell the device starting April 12. A question, however, lingered about current T-Mobile customers already with an unlocked iPhone and how it will play in the carrier's new 4G LTE efforts.
According to TmoNews, T-Mobile will rollout an update on April 5 enabling LTE and Visual Voicemail, among other features.
A message appeared in their report stating, "The T-Mobile Carrier Update is a minor iOS software update that enables official iPhone support by T-Mobile. When installed, the software update enables a handful of capabilities like Visual Voicemail, MMS Settings and Network/Device optimizations that customers do not have access to today. On April 5, the software update will begin being pushed via OTA to all iPhone devices on the T-Mobile network with iOS 6.1.x or higher."
The update is among T-Mobile latest efforts in major changes. The U.S. carrier recently announced it will cover as many as 100 million customers by mid-2013 with 4G LTE and further projects 200 million customers by the end of the year.
T-Mobile's announcement makes it the last among the top four U.S. carriers to venture into 4G LTE territory, following AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless. Verizon currently holds the title of having the most LTE coverage, blanketing more than 480 markets across the country for more than 275 million people. Coming in second is AT&T with only 155 LTE markets while Sprint's numbers places it third with 67 LTE markets. If T-Mobile's projections are true, then it could surpass AT&T and Sprint, although keep in mind those two networks will be aggressively upgrading as well.
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