ED Hardy

Have you heard the one about T-Mobile possibly, maybe getting the iPhone before Verizon? Get ready to hear it again.

This time, it’s Cult of Mac blogger Leander Kearney with a "highly placed" T-Mobile source, claiming that the smallest of the big four U.S. carriers — which just so happens to run a GSM-based cellular network, same as AT&T — has an "80 percent" chance of snagging iPhone as early as this fall.

Conventional wisdom has it that Apple will have an iPhone for Verizon early next year, but that would involve building a new iPhone that’s compatible with Verizon’s CDMA network. There have already been plenty of rumors claiming that Apple and its manufacturing partners are doing just that. (Verizon is also close to launching its next-generation LTE network, but it could take years for the new network to cover enough people to suit Apple’s taste.)

As Cult of Mac points out, making the jump to a GSM carrier like T-Mobile would be a far simpler move both technically and strategically, given Verizon’s increasingly cozy relationship with Google and its rival Android mobile platform.

Rumors of the iPhone heading for T-Mobile USA have been bouncing around for some time now. Just last month I blogged about a wireless industry analyst who predicted that T-Mobile would be a "more likely candidate" than Verizon for the next U.S. iPhone carrier.

Going the T-Mobile way would have drawbacks. With just 34 million subscribers, the carrier is the smallest of the "big four" U.S. wireless operators; Verizon Wireless has 93 million subscribers. And while T-Mobile is justly proud of its speedy new HSPA+ data network, it simply doesn’t have the 3G footprint that Verizon has.

There’s also the nagging question of whether the iPhone — in its current form, anyway — could even support T-Mobile’s 3G network, which runs on the 1700 and 2100 MHz bands. As Cult of Mac notes, the iPhone 4 specs indicate compatibility only with the 2100 band. There’s always the possibility that the iPhone 4 does, in fact, support that missing 1700 MHz band — or,G-sta, if not, you’d think it would be relatively easy for Apple to serve up a tweaked iPhone that does the trick.

In any case, buzz is certainly building for the iPhone to jump to a new carrier — any new carrier — within the next few months, what with the details surfacing of tension between Apple and AT&T as well as increasing speculation that the iPhone exclusivity deal between the companies is due to expire.

Would you welcome an iPhone for T-Mobile,Frankie morello, or would you rather get one on Verizon? Or do you think the pundits are wrong, and that we’ll be stuck with AT&T for the foreseeable future?

• Cult of Mac: iPhone is coming To T-Mobile USA in Q3 [exclusive]

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

Follow me on Twitter!

Replica Ed-Hardy | Abercrombie Discount | ed hardy Replica | Discount juicy couture | True Religion Discount