AT&T revealed Thursday morning that it had already activated more than 1 million iPhone 4S devices as of Tuesday, which makes this iPhone launch the most successful ever for the carrier. AT&T is the only U.S. carrier to support the new iPhone’s HSPA+ mobile broadband speeds.
It’s the additional speed that AT&T is citing as the reason for its success so far. “It’s no surprise that customers are clamoring for iPhone 4S and they want it to run on a network that lets them download twice as fast as competitors’,” said Ralph de la Vega, President and CEO, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets in a press release from the carrier. Both Verizon and Sprintonly support CDMA 3G technology for the iPhone 4S.
AT&T is also the only carrier to offer simultaneous use of phone-based voice and data services, since its GSM network allows for that while the CDMA networks of the other two carriers don’t.
AT&T had already announced a record number of iPhones activated on its network as of Monday, and said then it was “on-track to double [its] previous record for activations in a single day.” The company also revealed in its earnings report Thursday that during the quarter ending in September, more than half of the smartphones activated on its network were iPhones.
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