Report: Sprint to offer unlimited data for iPhone 5 customers

In its battle to hold a competitive edge against wireless Goliaths AT&T and Verizon, Sprint will reportedly maintain unlimited data service plans for customers who choose Apple’s presumably upcoming iPhone 5, reports Bloomberg.

According to “people familiar with the matter,” Sprint, which currently ranks third in terms of customers in the US wireless market, will begin selling the iPhone 5 in mid-October, which is when the device is rumored to arrive for all carriers.

If it offers an unlimited plan, Sprint would be the only US carrier with the iPhone 5 to do so, and could potentially draw customers from AT&T and Verizon, the only other providers to have Apple’s popular handset in their stables of devices.

Sprint currently offers comparable devices, like BlackBerrys and the HTC Evo, an Android-based handset. The company provides unlimited voice and data plans to customers with those devices for $99.99 per month. The cost would likely remain the same for iPhone 5 customers.

AT&T, on the other hand, offers unlimited voice for $69.99 per month, with a $15 a month charge for 200 megabytes of data, $25 for 2 gigabytes or $45 for 4 GB. Verizon’s data plans range from $30 for 2GB a month to $80 for 10 GB, plus the $69.99 for unlimited voice.

In other words, Sprint’s alleged offering would be far more simple and less expensive, at least for heavy data users, than either of the other two iPhone carriers. Good plan, right? Right.

Now the bad news: This is just another tidbit in a relentless series of unconfirmed iPhone 5 reports — a series that is unlikely to end until we get some official word about the device from Apple. Here’s hoping that comes sometime soon, before we all just stop paying attention. (Certainly, some of you already have.)

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