China Telecom customers are about to get the iPhone 5, according to a report in the Global Times. Customer service staff from the carrier’s Beijing branch reportedly told the newspaper that the carrier is starting to take pre-orders for Apple’s latest iOS device. A launch date was not provided, but rumors suggest the handset will hit in mid-December. Apple said earlier this year that the company intends to rollout the phone to hundreds of countries and 240 carriers by the end of 2012.
China Telecom is China’s third largest carrier and has 155 million subscribers. It started selling the iPhone 4S earlier this year and the phone took off. Before the iPhone 4S officially landed on store shelves, the carrier took 200,000 pre-orders, and after its launch in March 2012, strong sales of the iPhone boosted China Telecom’s Q2 2012 subscriber base by 8.35 million customers.
[Via Global News and iDownload blog]