LAS VEGAS – The iPhone 6 will feature support for Band 41. That means it will be the first iPhone to take advantage of Sprint’s Spark network running in the 2.5 GHz Band.

After Sprint last year acquired Clearwire and gained access to its massive 2.5 GHz EBS spectrum holdings, there was anticipation that Apple would build in support. But the neither the iPhone 5S nor 5C supported the band.

Since then, though, China Mobile has started selling the iPhone and they are also deploying TDD-LTE in the 2.5 GHz Band. Being the largest mobile carrier in the world by the long shot, China Mobile greatly increased the odds Band 41 would make it into the iPhone 6.

Now with Spark support in the iPhone 6, Sprint is promising 50-60 Mbps downlink, a big speed boost over the 25-30 Mbps it got with the previous iPhone model.

Sprint has said it intends to have 100 million people covered by its Spark network by the end of 2014.

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus also support Sprint’s 1.9 GHz and 800 MHz LTE deployments.