AppleInsider Staff
America's fifth-largest wireless carrier, U.S. Cellular, announced Friday that it will be selling Apple's new iPad Air from Nov. 8, possibly signaling a sell-by date for smaller regional carriers across the country.
In its announcement, U.S. Cellular said the iPad Air will be offered in a range of plans allowing the tablet to connect to its 4G LTE network. While the product has yet to show up on the company's official webpage, it can be expected that the latest iPad will net the same data tiers available to other tablets like Samsung's Galaxy Note series.
It was previously reported that U.S. Cellular would be granted access to Apple's newest iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c on Nov. 8, making the day a big one for the company.
The announcement comes on the heels of news that smaller regional providers C Spire and Bluegrass Cellular would also carry the iPad Air, though a definite timeline was not announced. At the time, telecoms quoted a launch date "in the coming weeks." While mere speculation, the larger U.S. Cellular's sell-by date could offer some perspective as to Apple's rollout schedule for carriers beyond the "big-four," Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.
U.S. Cellular first announced that it would begin carrying Apple products in May. At the time, the company was the sixth-largest wireless carrier in the country.
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
Wesley Hilliard
Marko Zivkovic
2 Comments
As I posted over in [URL=http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/160389/apple-to-launch-ipad-air-on-regional-american-wireless-providers-in-coming-weeks#post_2424840]the other thread[/URL], there is no secret to which carriers are going to support the new iPad Air or retina iPad mini, it's posted for all to see right on Apple's website: http://www.apple.com/ipad/LTE/ [Quote="http://www.apple.com/ipad/LTE/"] [B]Supported LTE Networks[/B] iPad Air Model A1475 iPad mini with Retina display Model A1490 1 (2100 MHz) 2 (1900 MHz) 3 (1800 MHz) 4 (AWS) 5 (850 MHz) 7 (2600 MHz) 8 (900 MHz) 13 (700c MHz) 17 (700b MHz) 18 (800 MHz) 19 (800 MHz) 20 (800 DD MHz) 25 (1900 MHz) 26 (800 MHz)4 [B]United States[/B] Aio AT&T Bluegrass C Spire GCI Sprint T-Mobile [B]US Cellular[/B] Verizon[/Quote]
My dad switched to Verizon in Wisconsin extremely reluctantly to get the iPhone. They love US Cellular there and he is back with them on Nov 8.