T-Mobile Announces 3G Plans
from the catching-up dept
T-Mobile didn’t waste much time after the close of the AWS spectrum auction, in which it was the leading bidder, to announce its 3G plans. It said today that work has already begun on its 3G HSDPA network, and it will launch in mid-2007, and will be complete by 2009. It was pretty clear that the auction was really just a formality for T-Mobile, and that it would do whatever it took to secure the spectrum it needed for 3G services. There’s been a lot of talk about how “behind” T-Mobile is in terms of 3G, but if it can launch with significant coverage by the middle of next year (which is by no means assured), it will have closed a significant gap on Cingular, which was earlier this week forced to refute reports that its 3G rollout was running well behind schedule. Cingular says it will offer service in “most major markets” by the end of the year, and the top 100 by the end of 2007. While having the service up and running is one thing, getting people to use it is another — Cingular hasn’t offered more than a few 3G devices, and hasn’t made any sort of marketing push or rolled out new services to entice users. You’d expect Cingular to pick up the pace, given T-Mobile’s news today, but the two share a common problem: sourcing handsets for their 3G spectrum, which differs from that being used in the rest of the world. This is an area where the scale of T-Mobile’s international corporate brethren, and their 90 million or so combined customers, could give it some help. Keep in mind, too, that T-Mobile’s got the 3G buildout experience of its UK, German and other European units from which to draw, so expect it to hit the ground running.
Comments on “T-Mobile Announces 3G Plans”
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The choice of EDGE handsets isn’t too great either if you’re not willing to shell out the cash for a PDA phone or a Nokia, which t-mobile doesn’t subsidize too much. The choice for camera phones which have EDGE narrows down to a couple of Samsungs… and even that with two year contracts. The RAZR doesn’t have EDGE, and I’m probably close to a typical buyer, who’d just like to have a fast connection for the occasional use of local google maps for mobile.
Bundle glm, along with an rss reader on something like a samsung t609, advertise a little and watch people use the internet on their phones for something other than tiny resolution video on a tiny screen.
I bit the bullet anyway and signed on for two more years right after t-mobile contracts started becoming two years. I guess it’ll be nice that they’ll have 3G headsets come next time of renewal.
Re: Re:
handsets, not headsets.
Sounds like you need a RIM Pearl then if you want Google maps, Edge
T-Mobile rolling in 3G, and Japan rolling in 4G.
Good thing my SDA is EDGE capable
Lovely that Sprint was left off the list. Their 3G network and EVDO has been rolling along for some time, and they are already working on developing their 4G. Japan is always ahead of the US because they are innovative.
Instead of spending $200+ billion in Iraq chasing oil, why not develop our own country’s networking infrastructure, implement full broadband, and…. oh yeah… help out with that homeless/hungry issue too.
Who’d have thought!?!?!?!
Re: Forget About Sprint?
I’d rather spend $200+ billion in Iraq freeing millions of fellow humans from a brutal dictator than have faster access to the latest crappy Dixie Chicks song. Get your priorities straight.
Oh, and by the way, Japan has a pretty bad homeless problem that it conveniently sweeps under the rug. Try walking around the Ginza some night and see how many people you have to step over to get to your next anti-Iraq War rally.
Japan is innovative?
Q: Where’d they get their cellphone technology?
A: Qualcomm (US Company).
Q: Who invented the cellphone?
A: Motorola (another US company)
Have a nice day.
Interesting point...
I have a T-Mobile SDA also and it has EDGE so I’m not so worried about all this, however there is one interesting point I’d like to make.
In the US war for independance, 30,000 british troops went up against 3,000 american troops. The brits were better armed and far less tired than the american troops. I assume everyone is aware that the americans won, due to the simple fact that the brits had come prepared for the kind of battle they would’ve fought on a continent like europe, not one like north america, and subsequently they lost, with the american side taking only minimum casualties. In one battle, Washington had 3,000 troops against a force of 7,000 (mostly from prussia) and when all was done, he had 2,000+ POW’s and literally no american casualties. Several wounded, but he lost no men against a force twice the size of his.
The moral of the story is that their buildout experience, like anything which crosses the pond, is pretty likely not to serve them well. America is larger and much more bumpy. Music (i.e. the Beatles) doesn’t care about that kind of boundary, however short-range wireless signals do. I simply don’t want them adding this 3G support, only for the nearest place I can use it to be a 2 hour drive away, as it is now with both sprint and verizon. I want to be able to be at the nearby lake, with a population of about 200, and still get 3G signal rates. If I can’t, that’s fine, but they had better not jack up the price I pay to cover the cost of adding this capability for someone else, which is one of the (very few) bad habbits T-Mobile has. My service (GSM and GPRS) is great, and I have more monites for $39 than anyone else I know, but that same plan now costs $49 and I’ll feel like crap reccomending T-Mobile to someone next year if they hike it to $59 to cover some idiot in Atlanta’s 3G service.
Laws, not People
Also, to #7, america has people within who are far more innovative than many top minds in japan. The reason america doesn’t innovate as much is simply due to laws. We issue patents on ideas that are common sense and then turn around and issue them to someone else again. In a truely innovative society, patents wouldn’t exist, and nobody could claim ownership over an idea. In that perfectly innovative society, you could only make a profit from a product or a service, not from an idea, but that’s the world you learn about in economics class, not the real world. In a truely innovative world, there would’ve been a vaccine for cancer 10 minutes after the first case of cancer was discovered, people could have mechanical parts implanted in them (hearts, lungs, etc) when their existing organs gave out so we could live forever, someone would develop a machine to clean cigarette’s back down to nothing but tobacco and they’d be no more harmful than a cup of coffee, and we wouldn’t have troops searching for oil in Iraq, we’d have robitic infantry and computer controlled fighters and bombers. The only humans would be on a giant hovercraft in the persian gulf directing all the combat by satelite. That’s a perfectly innovative society, and neither the US, Japan, or anyone else has it. Reguardless of who is closest to that given society, america has and will always have the most intelligent people on the planet, but just the same we will always have many of the dumbest, and since those who are stupid and those who are smart vote equally, we’ll more often than not elect dumbasses to congress and to the white house, and as such we get stupid laws such as patents and copyrights and ideas aeren’t free, so innovation is permanently hindered. Until a country is started where patents, copyrights, and the like don’t exist, and that country is a soverign nation with smart people in it and has an army capable of defending against an invvasion from the entire rest of the world, then the perfectly innovative society won’t exist. Communism, sad as it may be, is actually the only form of government which can produce such a society. America has repetedly destroyed communist states one after another. I am an american, and a damn proud one, but even I have to admit that comminism, at least in its pure form (if that could ever be reached) is by far the perfect form of government, and amongst other things, yes, it would be the most innovative society in the world if it existed. Therefore, america is not only against innovation with our current laws, but against the foprming of other countries who might out-innovate us.
That, my friend, is the truth. The people of America long to innovate even moreso than those of Japan, but we never will.