Following years of rumors suggesting the inevitability, subscribers of T-Mobile will finally gain long-awaited access to Apple’s iPhone 5 next month.
The nation’s fourth largest carrier will now be afforded the opportunity to better compete with AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint – each of which has offered the iPhone for a considerably lengthy period of time already.
On Tuesday at the company’s “uncarrier” event, T-Mobile confirmed plans to offer a 16-gigabyte iPhone 5 for just $99 up front, followed by 20 monthly payments of $20.
The iPhone officially goes on sale at T-Mobile on April 12th, although preorders begin next Friday, April 5th.
“The revamped No. 4 carrier is still the underdog,” writes Ina Fried of AllThingsD, “but now the company has some of the pieces it has long been missing. T-Mobile has been readying an LTE network, making plans to stop subsidizing new phones, and has struck a deal to start selling the iPhone.”