Free iPhone

A flurry of reports have insinuated that the larger upfront subsidies carriers pay to gain access to the iPhone are “not good for wireless carriers,” with one blog claiming “carriers hate the iPhone,” despite facts indicating the opposite.

Apple has negotiated generous subsidies from mobile carriers to sell iPhones at lower upfront prices, but Google and its Android licensees haven’t, leaving carriers such as Verizon to drive up the price of higher end Android phones to make up the difference.

Apple now sells iPhones that work on three of the top four national US mobile carriers. Here’s a look at how well you can expect Apple’s latest smartphones to work on each of these mobile data networks, based on real world testing of each carrier’s data throughput.

Before launching the first iPhone, late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs wanted to replace established mobile carriers by creating a proprietary network specifically for the handset by leveraging an unused license-free spectrum band.