T-Mobile news abounds with 3G, new plans, and Sprint buyout rumors

After years of delay, T-Mobile has finally started rolling out 3G. New York city is up as of May 1st, with all major metropolitan areas slated to be up and running by the end of the year (list of cities from TmoNews). I can't wait for Washington, DC to be turned on, the only problem is that they have not announced any Windows Mobile devices which use the 1700/2100MHZ band. I wonder what kind of roaming arrangement they have struck with AT&T and whether my Tilt will work. Lots of questions yet to be answered...

TmoNews also reported that a new plan promotion between May 14 and 31 allows everyone in a MyFaves Family plan to share MyFaves entries. This gives each member of a 5 phone Family plan access to 25 MyFaves. The promotion also includes HotSpot@Home, unlimited T-Mobile to T-Mobile, and unlimited nights and weekend (plan description). If the pricing is what TmoNews says it is, this would provide my family with MyFaves and HotSpot@Home for the same monthly fee I pay now just for HotSpot@Home. Now all I need to decide is whether I want to stay with T-Mobile for another 2 years...

The third piece of news; the rumor that T-Mobile might be interested in buying Sprint. Although this would catapult them to the lead position in the USA, I think the Nextel Sprint network integration/migration disaster should be enough to dissuade any sane manager. Even if Sprint spins off the Nextel component, migrating from CDMA to GSM is not going to be an easy task, T-Mobile would be running two networks for many years to come.

Comments

[Chris Beard]

I have been wondering if they weren't getting close with 3G. The reason is I have been noticing my phone (Nokia E65 purchased unlocked in Europe through Vodafone) has been sporadically picking up 3G signal. At first I thought it was a glitch on the phone, but after reading the news I think they might be opening it up for testing purposes. What I can't determine is if Toledo is an actual market or if I am part of the Detroit area, which seems to be on the semi-short list of cities to be activated soon. I was happy to read that service will be UMTS and HSDPA because my phone only supports UMTS. We'll see what offerings T-Mobile USA will come out with for 3G phones. If history is any judge it won't be very impressive...
Also I can't see T-Mobile purchasing Sprint. There are court hearings going on in Germany now regarding T-Mobile's purchase of VoiceStream, and Ron Sommer, the former CEO of T-Mobile had to testify in court if he knew of VS's troubles before the purchase, because T-Mobile Germany's stock took a huge dive after that and stockholders are suing the company. In lieu of that I can't imagine the board going approving this, especially with regard to the network issues you outlined.

[Stephen Skarlatos]

Funny you brought up seeing the 3G icon on your N95, today I noticed an H icon (HSDPA) for the first time on my Tilt. It never connected and went back to Edge.

I remember hearing about the shareholder lawsuits in Germany over the Voicestream purchase, unbelievable that it still making its way through the courts.