Cellcom isn’t the only small carrier to land the new iPhone. GCI, Appalachian Wireless, C Spire and Leap Wireless’s Cricket Communication will get the device this month as well. But Cellcom has an advantage those other carriers don’t: namely a network covering 230 million people.

Based in Green Bay, Wis., Cellcom was one of the first carriers to participate in Verizon’s LTE in Rural America program, in which Big Red leases portions of its 700 MHz 4G spectrum to regional carriers, who in turn use it to build out LTE networks. As part of the package, Verizon and its partners sign reciprocal roaming agreements. Verizon gets access to Cellcom’s LTE in footprint covering the population centers of eastern Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, while Cellcom gets access to Verizon’s footprint of 230 million in nearly 400 markets. Not a bad trade.

Cellcom’s LTE coverage through its roaming agreement with Verizon

LTE is still young in the US, and so most of the carrier haven’t yet brokered the roaming deals that interlock carriers 2G and 3G networks – and one of the big fears of rural operators is they never will get brokered. But Verizon’s rural LTE program is the exception as Verizon seeks to fill in the gaps between major markets as quickly as possible. Appalachian Wireless is also part of the program though it has yet to deploy a network.

While Leap and C Spire will definitely enjoy the prestige only the iPhone can bring, some of the device’s appeal may suffer from the limitations of their own LTE networks. C Spire launched its LTE network earlier this week in a handful of Mississippi markets and plans to have a coverage in 31 markets by the end of October. But it’s not clear if the iPhone 5 will work over its 4G networks. C Spire hasn’t confirmed what spectrum it is using for LTE, according to FierceWireless, but if it is using the 700 MHz A block spectrum it bought at auction for LTE, then its iPhone 5 will most definitely be sans-LTE. None of the three versions Apple announced Wednesday support that band.

Leap Wireless is still in the process of rolling out its LTE network that will cover 21 million people by year end, but so far it’s been slow going with only a single market live, Tucson, Oka. Leap will also have some spectrum issues supporting the iPhone. It is deploying its LTE network over three bands: PCS, Advanced Wireless Services, and the same 700 MHz A block used by C Spire.

The new iPhone supports the first two bands but only in separate variants. The CDMA model – which Leap will have to sell in order to use its 2G and 3G networks – only supports the PCS band. So how well Leap can take advantage of the iPhone 5’s capabilities depends on how much PCS spectrum it can devote to the LTE band.

Meanwhile GCI has yet to reveal its LTE plans so its iPhone 5 will automatically be a 3G-only device.

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Pioneer Cellular has added a small but notable entry to the growing list of LTE networks in the U.S. Telecompetitor reports Pioneer’s LTE service has gone live in six counties in Oklahoma, making it the first of Verizon’s “LTE in Rural America” partners to turn on its network.

The program is all part of the Verizon Wireless master plan to get accelerate the usually slow slog of new technology from urban to rural areas by recruiting rural operators to do the work. Verizon essentially owns a nationwide LTE license in the upper 700 MHz band, and while it plans to build its own 4G network covering 260 million people in the big and small cities, it’s leasing its airwaves in rural regions to about a dozen small operators. Those carriers will help Verizon fill in the gaping holes between the urban regions.

Rural operators like Pioneer get a lot out of the deal. They’re often the ones that failed to win 4G licenses, making the Rural America program their easiest path to 4G, but more importantly they get an automatic roaming partner in Verizon, which plans to leverage their networks to expand its LTE coverage in exchange. Smaller operators that own their own spectrum will find their roaming options limited due to interoperability problems in the 700 MHz bands.

Verizon is also in the center of a powerful device ecosystem. By virtue of using the same spectrum as Verizon, Pioneer and other Rural America partners can use the same devices. According to Telecompetitor, Pioneer is launching with a home broadband router, a MiFi hotspot and a dongle but no smartphones. Technically though, making any Verizon device compatible with Pioneer’s network will mean a mere software tweak. We may even see the new 4G iPad make its way to rural Oklahoma LTE networks before it appears on an LTE network in Europe or Asia.

Tower Image courtesy of Flickr user Nikhil Verma

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