Deutsche Telekom is known as T-Mobile here in the US. So, the #3 and #4 networks will support it. I wonder if AT&T or Verizon will chime in soon?
Not to argue with anything you're saying, just pointing out that that particular decision was more technical than anything.
The "unusual" frequency is also known as AWS bands, and are also used by other carriers and in other countries (only 4 at the moment so not pervasive), although there are now LTE deployments happening in the AWS bands.
The frequency retasking that allows a regular GSM iPhone to work is in full swing - http://www.tmonews.com/2013/01/t-mobiles-network-modernizati... - there is even a Twitter account tracking sightings https://twitter.com/UMTS1900 and a map http://airportal.de
When tmobile does start selling the iPhone (rumoured to be a few months out) it will be interesting to see if they piggyback off the parent company or deal with Apple directly. In order to deal with Apple you have comply with minimum order quantities (remember the Sprint $20bn numbers) http://www.asymco.com/2013/01/17/the-iphone-moq/
(I actually went the opposite direction for a little while. I had a Nexus One made for T-Mobile which I used on my AT&T account. It had the same problem in reverse, since it only had T-Mobile's 3G frequencies. The phone itself was decent, but the data speeds were a killer.)
Anyway, good to hear that it's happening, and thanks for the links. More competition is good, and I'm sure that a T-Mobile iPhone will help.
While that doesn't necessarily mean a commitment to carrying devices running it, it'd an awful lot of effort to go to if that weren't likely at all.
This will mean that US consumers will be seeing the true hardware price for the first time, and be able to make value judgements. Of course everyone expects the whole thing will fail because Americans are used to cell phones being really cheap, and tmobile has to try to convince people by doing arithmetic on lifetime costs, which is a far harder (and more complicated) sell.
I'm extremely sceptical that consumers will pay more for Firefox phones than iPhone and top end Android. And I have no doubt they'd pick Firefox (or anyone else for that matter) for phones that are "free", $50 or similar amounts, but those phones won't exist on tmobile except for feature phones around the $150 mark. Given a choice between a $350 Firefox or Android phone it will be interesting to see what happens, and the consumer will have to strongly consider if they are getting that much value from their purchase.
ZTE and Huawei are just the beginning of the wave of cheap smart phone providers that I expect to destroy the feature phone as a widely used device in the rich world in the coming years.
Granted, the two phones I bought weren't very fast and had smaller screens, but they did have GPS, mobile data and ran all the apps that I tried from the Play store.
* The vast majority of phones are sold by carriers due to the subsidy model. This leaves a considerably smaller market for the rest. Note the carriers chose which phones to carry - they will not provide arbitrary phones. Note this also applies even when someone like Amazon or Costco sell phones as they act as an agent for the carrier and the prices shown are the subsidised ones, and the phones are the carrier ones.
* Because of that most consumers think phones already cost free/$100 or $200 for high end ones, and there is no incentive to buy a non-carrier phone since plans aren't any cheaper for a non-subsidised phone (with the exception of one type of plan on Tmobile and some of the pre-paid MVNOs).
* Of the big 4 carriers (~85% of all mobile users) half have a CDMA legacy and half GSM, so those phones you bought could only work on 2 of the 4 carriers anyway
* And even that wouldn't be enough. Many cheap GSM phones are tri-band. To work with voice in the US they need to be quad band (also support 850MHz). There are various issues with the data frequencies too (eg Tmobile's AWS band) and even differing LTE bands for newer/more expensive phones
* If you care about coverage then you generally have to go with one of the big 3 (tmobile has notoriously poor coverage except in the most populated areas). If you use an MVNO then you are typically limited to the hosting carrier's network only. As an example I'm a tmobile subscriber, but in various areas a lot of their coverage is actually provided as a transparent roaming arrangement by AT&T - you don't see roaming on your phone. Similarly Verizon and Sprint have roaming in various places. But when using an MVNO you would using the native underlying carrier coverage only which will be a lot smaller footprint.
* All phones have to pass the FCC certification which is added expense and time especially if your sales aren't going to be that high
* People don't visit other countries as much (proportionally). You could fit the UK (including NI, Shetland, Jersey etc) in 2/3rds of California. Montana is the same size as Germany. This means a huge internal market with virtually no external influence or need for interoperability. That said the Canadian market is even more messed up than the US one. I don't know about Mexico.
That said you can buy some cheap phones including below $100 - eg see Walmart http://goo.gl/yoABV but note they are usually locked to a prepaid carrier! This http://goo.gl/KiUje is what consumers usually see - the subsidised prices which get you better phones at "cheaper" prices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operator...
Mozilla probably doesn't want to agree to those terms either, so I would be surprised if Verizon ever had one.
Just my experience with being a long time Verizon user and Android OS hobbyist modder.