iPhone: North To Alaska (Communications)

Apple will soon add two more names to its list of regional carrier iPhone partners. On April 20, Alaska Communications and nTelos Wireless will become the fifth and sixth U.S. carriers to add the device to their portfolios. Notably, nTelos plans to sell the iPhone 4S at a $50 discount.

For Apple, these are small distribution deals. Alaska Communications has a little more than 100,000 subscribers in its namesake territory; nTelos has about 400,000 in Virginia and surrounding states. That’s far, far fewer than AT&T or Verizon, which both claim more than 100 million. Still, signing up smaller carriers is important to Apple’s push for iPhone ubiquity, and these deals with nTelos and Alaska, small as they are, will help accelerate its market-share growth.

Update: Looks like this is a far broader regional rollout than originally thought. As MacRumors notes, GCI in Alaska, Appalachian Wireless in Kentucky and Cellcom in Wisconsin will also add the iPhone to their lineups on April 20.