There is no turning back for T-mobile now. They have finally turned on a second city where they’ll be offering their 3G service. After paying billions for the licence’s, and subjecting customers to hopelessly slow EDGE data for years, Las Vegas has become the second official city where 3G is offered. 

This means residents and visitors to Las Vegas and New York can benefit from faster speeds on their devices. Of course, since T-mobile barely has any compatible 3G devices in their lineup, it might be some time till anyone actually gets to enjoy it.

By the end of the year there should be 20 major cities with 3G coverage, so expect more of these announcements as more cities are “turned on”.

The rollout of 3G in Las Vegas apparently cost them $28 Million. Assuming most other cities will need twice as much infrastructure, T-mobile has close to $1 Billion in investments lined up.

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Tmonews has become a pretty reliable source of T-mobile news, so when they report on the upcoming official launch of 3G I’m going to assume they are correct. 3G on T-mobile already launched in New York City, where it is being tested with several “unnamed” 3G phones.

The October 1st launch should coincide with the launch of 3 or 4 new 3G enabled phones, including one 3G smartphone and a 3G enabled Blackberry.

All I can say is “it’s about frikkin time”.

Source: Tmonews.com

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The AT&T store is just across from this T-mobile kiosk, and had at least 100 people in line. And the Apple store above them had over 200 people in line. Must suck to watch that all day long.

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We’ll file this one in the "see it to believe it" category. According to TmoNews, T-mobile is going to enable 3G data in its 27 top markets on October 1st. These top markets include most major metropolitan areas of the country.

I’m leaning towards not trusting this news since it makes no sense to actually have the network in place but wait for a special date to actually turn it on. The only explanation is that T-mobile is planning a big launch for their 3G service, which might include a new lineup of 3G capable phones.

Either way, it’s all horribly late, but I guess "better late than never" really does apply here.

Source: TmoNews

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This is suddenly a hot topic. New phones are appearing on a rival network, but you are still under contract with your current operator. Canceling your contract will result in an early termination fee of up to $200, but what do you do if you want to keep your current number when you switch provider?

In most cases, it’s possible to port your number from operator A to operator B, without the contract at operator A coming to an end (and resulting in that ETF).

Once you’ve done the number port by calling operator B, call operator A and tell them you want a "win-back". This will assign your old line a new number and keep it active, thus avoiding the pain of the termination fee. In most cases you’ll see the ETF on your invoice, but once you do the win-back, it will be credited right away, so don’t wait too long to call them.

Of course, this means you’ll be stuck paying for 2 lines, but if you only have a couple of months left with operator A, then it means you can get that shiny new iPhone/Blackberry you’ve been dreaming of.

Of course, sooner or later all operators will have pro-rated termination fees, making this entire post obsolete.

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The current iPhone is great. It can be unlocked in under a minute, and it works perfectly on any GSM operator with EDGE (or even plain old GPRS). But if/when Apple introduces a 3G iPhone there is one group of people who’ll most likely be left in the 3G dark: T-mobile users.

When T-mobile finally got around to launching their 3G network in May, they had to do so on an obscure frequency band (1700MHz). It’s such a rarely used band, that only 2 operators in the world currently have licences to use it (T-mobile USA and eMobile in Japan). The chance of Apple implementing this rarely used band in the iPhone is next to nothing.

Assuming the next generation iPhone can be unlocked (and it’s probably just a matter of time), it’ll still be a plain old EDGE device on T-mobile. Which means you’ll need to switch to AT&T to get speedy data. Which sucks.

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T-mobile prepaid now comes with the option for unlimited nights. If you are a prepaid user, and have selected their "pay per day plan" ($1 per day for $0.10 calls), then you also get unlimited nighttime calls (7pm-7am).

If you talk a lot, then this really is a sweet plan, unlimited calls for a buck is pretty impressive, and even puts current postpaid users at a disadvantage (who only get 8pm nights).

The $1 charge only applies to days you actually use the phone, but has the disadvantage of not being eligible for the T-mobile prepaid gold rewards, nor can it be added to a Sidekick prepaid plan.

You can read all the fine print here.

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Here is a nice and simple way of getting 30 free days of T-mobile Hotspot access, without any kind of commitment.

Signup for their "pay as you go" plan, and you’ll get to try it out for a month, and after that it will convert to a pay as you use plan without any monthly fee. Pay as you go costs $6 per hour/login.

The promotion is officially intended for users of a Kodak Wi-Fi digital camera, but is open to anyone.

Product page: T-mobile Hotspot promotion (via Fatwallet)

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I always knew that we were getting a bad deal in the US when it comes to mobile broadband; but an ad in this months T3 shows just how crappy things are.

UK users can get a 1Gb broadband account, with a free modem for just GBP10 a month (around $20). Extra data is available for a little more ($30 for 3Gb or $50 for 7Gb). The modem is free, shipping is free, there is no activation fee, and the contact is just 18 months.

For comparison, here are the current US mobile broadband (stand-alone) rates:

All these rates are based on a 2 year agreement with the cheapest available modem option.

I’m sure that a $20/month 1Gb plan would sell like crazy in the US, which is probably why none of the operators would dare sell it. Imagine selling something your customers actually want…

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If you thought that the idea of Yahoo! and Microsoft merging didn’t make any sense, then this one will really make your head spin…

Der Spiegel reported this past weekend that Deutsche Telekom is looking at purchasing Sprint.

The same Sprint that just had a 30 Billion Dollar write-off after their purchase of Nextel didn’t go exactly as planned…

I’m sure it’s not impossible that these two giants will merge, but the technical nightmare that would result from trying to piece together their networks would make it very difficult to become a success. T-mobile is a GSM network, Sprint is CDMA and their Nextel division is I-Den.

Source: Der Spiegel via Bloomberg

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