According to the third quarter earnings audited report that was released this week, U.S. Cellular CEO Mary Dillon told investors of the company that the company turned down Apple Inc. when approached in regards to providing models of the iPhone devices to U.S. Cellular customers. Dillon said that the U.S. Cellular’s network was definitely capable of handling and providing the expanded traffic from sales of a new iPhone products, but the Apple’s offer was rejected due to terms that were “unacceptable from a risk and profitability standpoint.” This indicates that Apple may have wanted a large order placed as well as an upfront payment from the US Cellular. Apple may have also specify a set of conditions around distribution and in-store placement of the iPhones that was unacceptable to U.S. Cellular.

While U.S. Cellular is currently having about six million customers without access to the iPhone, the company certainly isn’t the largest cellular provider without Apple’s popular device. The 34 million subscribers on T-Mobile’s service also don’t have access to the service  yet, specifically because Apple has not developed a version of the phone that is compatible with T-Mobile’s service. While T-Mobile phones definitely operate at the rate of a 3G and 4G speeds, the 3G service operates on the AWS frequency band which is incompatible with various models of the iPhone.

However, Apple did sign an agreement with the regional cellular provider  C Spire which according to the report will provide approximately 900,000 subscribers with access to the iPhone 4 and 4S starting from next Friday.

In addition to the article about the rejection of the Apple’s offer, Mary states that the launch of the LTE network was being delayed until early 2012. Previously, the company had planned to offer LTE access during the fourth quarter of 2011. The initial launch of the LTE network will take place in states such as North Carolina, Iowa, Oklahoma, Maine, North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin. In addition to that, Plans concerning the launch in supplementary to what is already present in the markets will be announced throughout the year.

This article idea was originally generated from Digital Trends