Sprint To Continue Unlimited Data Plan For Next iPhone

After confirming to offer an unlimited data plan for its upcoming 4G LTE network at the beginning of this month, Sprint Nextel has confirmed that it will not change the plan even when the next iteration of iPhone arrives.

I'm not anticipating the unlimited plan would change by that point, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse told CNET Wednesday. That's our distinctive differentiator.

According to him, the company's decision to continue with the unlimited data plan has worked in its favor and helped Sprint draw in new customers who wouldn't have otherwise considered the carrier.

Frankly, it's a marriage made in heaven, he opined about the combination of unlimited data plan and the iPhone. We're clearly attracting customers from our competitors.

Sprint, the nation's third largest wireless carrier after AT&T and Verizon, has recently switched to LTE from WiMAX.

Hesse, however, maintained silence on the release of the next generation of iPhone but it is widely rumored that the phone will be compatible with LTE since the new iPad 3 was also launched with the 4G support.

And, to make its iPhone LTE enabled, Apple has to make the device a little thicker to accommodate a larger circuit board and a bigger battery, said experts pointing that this was the reason why Apple rejected the plan of implementing 4G LTE in its iPhone 4S.

In a company earnings conference call in April 2011, Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned, First-generation LTE chipsets force a lot of design compromises, and hence the feature was avoided in the last iPhone.