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.
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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.
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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!?!?!?!
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Re: Forget About Sprint?
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.
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Interesting point...
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.
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Laws, not People
That, my friend, is the truth. The people of America long to innovate even moreso than those of Japan, but we never will.
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