Everyone got an invite to dance with one of the prettiest girls in school except for poor old T-Mobile.  Apple seems to believe T-Mobile is destined to collapse as an independent company so they’ve decided to give every physical wireless carrier in the United States an iPhone 4S except for T-Mobile.  Given that T-Mobile is bleeding half a million customers in 2011 and that profits are rapidly declining, T-Mobile’s owner Deutsche Telekom had long decided that they would not invest in LTE for T-Mobile USA.  These factors will combine to confirm suspicions that T-Mobile will not survive, serving to accelerate the loss of customers.  T-Mobile customers like Chris Spera of InformationWeek is hoping for a merger so he can get an iPhone.

The only entity in denial about this inevitability seems to be the U.S. government, which is suing to stop T-Mobile from being acquired by AT&T, under the notion that they will preserve T-Mobile as a competitor in the wireless marketplace.  But if the US Justice Department wins its lawsuit, it will be a pyrrhic victory that will fail to preserve T-Mobile and will actually stifle rural LTE deployment.  The iPhone 4S is merely the final nail in the coffin for T-Mobile. It is time to recognize the obvious and get whatever concessions there are to be gleaned from a T-Mobile merger approval and move on.

[Cross-posted at High Tech Forum]