It’s amazing what can change in a week. That’s how much time it took from T-Mobile’s chief operating officer Jim Ailing saying the company would not be acquiring rights to market the Apple iPhone at this time until Merrill Lynch’s Scott Craig’s note reporting a deal doing just that may occur as early as next week.

“Make no mistake about it: We would love to carry the iPhone,” Ailing said at a conference in Barcelona last week. “However, we want the economies to be right for us.”

Did something change in the past week, or was Ailing throwing out a red herring? Because today Craig reported heightened speculation that Deutsche Telecom—T-Mobile’s parent company—will announce a deal to offer the iPhone at next week’s analyst’s day.

Signals point to accuracy in Craig’s report. T-Mobile has increased its iPhone-compatible high-speed HSPA+ network in 10 metropolitan areas recently, which has actually allowed 1.5 million T-Mobile customers currently using unlocked iPhones access to better download speeds. Plus, even Ailing acknowledged the company has lost customers by not offering the leading smartphone product to its 33 million US customers.

Currently, T-Mobile is the only major US carrier that does not carry the Apple smartphone.

“We recognize that it has been a point of churn for us,” Ailing said last week.

Likewise, Craig noted a deal with T-Mobile—the nation’s fourth-largest mobile provider—would increase Apple’s access to 98 percent of the US market, excluding prepaid customers, and 75 percent of total mobile subscribers.

“While this would be incrementally positive, any financial impact would be limited,” Craig wrote, explaining a deal between T-Mobile and Apple would add about 4 million iPhones to the approximately 179 million sold in 2013, and would likely increase Apple’s total revenue by just 1 percent and its earnings per share by 2 percent.

[Image via Apple]