Apple is currently catering only one major GSM/LTE network in the US, AT&T, but T-Mobile announced recently that it will be offering iPhone 5 on its network that will support LTE on its network on iPhone. Both AT&T and T-Mobile current follow different set of baseband frequencies for their LTE networks that would trouble Apple to manufacture two different set of iPhones catering customers separately on AT&T and T-Mobile. But T-Mobile recently gave out official details saying that Apple will be merging support for both the networks and launch a new version of iPhone 5 that supports AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) of T-Mobile and AT&T LTE networks on a single device. The new version of iPhone 5 comes unlocked off the shelf and will support any LTE networks in the US from T-Mobile and AT&T
Sadly it has also been confirmed that turning an iPhone 5 into AWS supporting iPhone is not just a software gimmick, Apple is changing their hardware to enable this support. So users who were dreaming of shifting their base from AT&T to T-Mobile and still use LTE network need to get a new iPhone 5. T-Mobile said that it will be offering a contract version of the same iPhone 5 as well to its customers as per their choice.
This new welcome change is being applied only to iPhone 5 and not older versions of iPhones currently on sale. Apple will be hoping to cut down the variants of iPhone to avoid software update and manufacturing hassles.
Source: Engadget