T-Mobile Germany has come up with a viable excuse for the brief appearance of what was thought to be a promotional page for the Apple iPhone on the operator’s website on Monday.

The German operator inadvertently started the rumour mill grinding, when what appeared to be a test page went up on the t-mobile.de website at t-mobile.de/iphone.

Although there was no damning evidence on the page, it just had the words “iPhone” and “index test” on it, many assumed that the carrier had bagged the deal to sell the gadget in Germany.

But a T-Mobile Germany spokesman told telecoms.com that the site was merely a technical page the company’s web technicians had been tinkering with when trying to create a landing page for the huge amount of “iPhone” searches the web site was receiving.

Now that the initial story is out, T-Mobile.de is probably getting more iPhone searches than ever, while we can go back to speculating on which carrier will win the contract.