T-Mobile USA Opens Pre-Orders For iPhone 5 Starting At $99.99, Shipping April 12

T-Mobile USA has now started online pre-orders for the iPhone 5 — the first time that the carrier will be offering the device. Prices start at $99.99 for the 16GB models if you opt for a subsequent monthly payment plan of $20/month for 24 months; or $579 upfront.
It also happened that the Apple Store went down globally for several hours earlier — it has just come back up. Many had speculated that this was to add T-Mobile to the list of carriers stocking the device in the U.S. (although the store was down outside the U.S. as well). But since going live again, there is still no sign of T-Mobile alongside Sprint, AT&T and Verizon.
As T-Mobile had revealed previously, will begin shipping iPhone orders on April 12.
Yesterday, in preliminary numbers for the first quarter of the year, T-Mobile indicated that it had picked up 579,000 new users — a positive, early response to its “Un-carrier” campaign — no long contracts, lots of phones you can buy upfront.