If you thought things were messy with U.S. networks, Verizon and Sprint using CMDA and AT&T and T-Mobile using GSM, things are even worse in China – with WCDMA, CDMA2000, CDMA1X, GSM, TDD-LTE and FDD-LTE all in use by different carriers in different combinations.
The iPhone 6 may be about to make life a whole lot easier, though, with Sina (via ZDNet) reporting that the model sold by China Telecom at least will support all of the wireless networks in use in the country, based on a Weibo post by the carrier. Admittedly the image used in the Weibo above looks a little different than the general consensus we’ve seen before – they were created by Tomas Moyano and Nicolàs Aichino, and China Telecom likely downloaded them from Bēhance.
That aside, the message they are sending might be more interesting…
This suggests that Apple may be making a single version of each iPhone model for the Chinese market, simplifying its inventory and also enabling China Telecom – the poor man’s carrier in China – to offer LTE data for the first time. The company has been losing subscribers ever since the iPhone launched on China Mobile.
It should be noted that China Telecom has since deleted the Weibo post on which the Sina report was based, so there’s no way to tell whether it was untrue or simply made public before it should have been.
China Telecom made the news recently when Apple confirmed that it has started using the company’s data centers for iCloud storage for Chinese customers.
More of the renders below:
