Yay 3g!

SkyHog

SkyHog

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Feb 23, 2005
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Castle Rock, CO
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Everything Offends Me
Looks like T-Mo is FINALLY launching a few more 3g markets! For those of you in Baltimore, Houston and Minneapolis, you can rejoice with me! :D

All three have launched, and more cities are to come! As soon as I find whether the markets are not confidential, I'll post them (why, I dunno, I'm bored at work). lol
 
By the end of 2008, the following markets are supposed to be 3g:
Minneapolis
Miami
Dallas
Chicago
Houston
Philadelphia
Denver
Detroit
Orlando
Kansas City
Atlanta
Los Angeles
New England
Portland
Sacramento
San Diego
Seattle
Washington DC
San Francisco
Birmingham
Memphis
Tampa
Phoenix


Dammit, Albuquerque is not on the list :(
 
Glad to see Miami made it, suprized to see New York didn't...unless they're including it with New England.
 
Henning said:
Glad to see Miami made it, suprized to see New York didn't...unless they're including it with New England.
Click to expand...

New York was actually first. Its been active since about March or so.
 
SkyHog said:
New York was actually first. Its been active since about March or so.
Click to expand...

So what's the story with my Blackberry Curve that's GPRS/EDGE? Will it do 3G or do I need to upgrade, and is T-Mobile gonna kick in?
 
Henning said:
So what's the story with my Blackberry Curve that's GPRS/EDGE? Will it do 3G or do I need to upgrade, and is T-Mobile gonna kick in?
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No, and No. Only new 3g phones will work with the 3g network. :(
 
Henning said:
T-mobile needs to do me an upgrade.
Click to expand...

You can check and see if you qualify for any special pricing. I don't really do that stuff, so I have no idea (plus, I can't really discuss that when not talking to you on the phone either).

Good luck!
 
SkyHog said:
3g - faster data connections for cell phones. Something every other carrier has had for years. T-Mobile's finally decided to try to keep up.
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Nick, where does Austin fit in on the Dallas region?
 
SkyHog said:
3g - faster data connections for cell phones. Something every other carrier has had for years. T-Mobile's finally decided to try to keep up.
Click to expand...

Nick,

From the insider's perspective, do you have any idea why they were so slow? I never understood that.

I have 3G in Madison with AT&T, but it's fairly new. I'm pretty sure that part of the original Apple/iPhone contract with AT&T mandated that they greatly expand both their voice and 3G/data networks.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Nick,

From the insider's perspective, do you have any idea why they were so slow? I never understood that.

I have 3G in Madison with AT&T, but it's fairly new. I'm pretty sure that part of the original Apple/iPhone contract with AT&T mandated that they greatly expand both their voice and 3G/data networks.
Click to expand...
While not a T-mo insider I do have a perspective. T-Mo bought up a lot of little GSM operators around the nation to build their foot print and they had a lot of network integration issues. They also had the fewest pops and subscribers in PCS for a long time that resulted in not a lot fo revenue for them. AT&T was running a technology nationwide called ANSI-136 TDMA and made the decisio to cut over all of their network to GSM and 3G. They were the first US network to make that diecison. There were and still are a lot of competing technologies that can do all the things that 3G can do. So part of T-Mo strategy was likely watching which technologies would start to emerge as the dominate one before making a commitment.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Nick,

From the insider's perspective, do you have any idea why they were so slow? I never understood that.

I have 3G in Madison with AT&T, but it's fairly new. I'm pretty sure that part of the original Apple/iPhone contract with AT&T mandated that they greatly expand both their voice and 3G/data networks.
Click to expand...

T-Mobile official answer was always that it was more important to add important features before improving the current existing ones. For example, adding UMA capabilities, adding a wap deck that integrated with customer accounts, adding caller tunes, and increasing the number of towers and stores that customers could use.

I don't suspect that T-Mobile believes in 3G to this day, as it is not very heavily advertised. I think they'll be surprised to see what a difference it will make in customer numbers once it gets rolled out and more handsets support it.

Sue Nokes has said from day one that she felt that 3G was a gimmick and not something that T-Mobile should focus its energy on. I doubt that has changed.
 
smigaldi said:
So part of T-Mo strategy was likely watching which technologies would start to emerge as the dominate one before making a commitment.
Click to expand...

And wait for all of their data-hungry customers to jump ship in the process? Doesn't sound like the smartest idea to me.

From the customer perspective, I don't care if it's EVDO or HSDPA - "Make my data go fast" is what matters. From that perspective, you'd think it would make sense to just use what they can to get that capability out.

SkyHog said:
T-Mobile official answer was always that it was more important to add important features before improving the current existing ones. For example, adding UMA capabilities, adding a wap deck that integrated with customer accounts, adding caller tunes, and increasing the number of towers and stores that customers could use.
Click to expand...

What is UME and wap deck? :dunno:

And am I the only one who thinks caller tunes are annoying? What's wrong with "ring, ring, ring, ring?"
 
> And am I the only one who thinks caller tunes are annoying?

nope

>What's wrong with "ring, ring, ring, ring?"

absolutely nothing
 
flyingcheesehead said:
And wait for all of their data-hungry customers to jump ship in the process? Doesn't sound like the smartest idea to me.

From the customer perspective, I don't care if it's EVDO or HSDPA - "Make my data go fast" is what matters. From that perspective, you'd think it would make sense to just use what they can to get that capability out.



What is UME and wap deck? :dunno:

And am I the only one who thinks caller tunes are annoying? What's wrong with "ring, ring, ring, ring?"
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Sorry, WAP Deck is a t-mo specific term, basically, think "V-Spot" or "T-Zones" or whatever AT&T has for their little internet thingie, where its not really internet access, but you can download content and check your account status, etc.

And yes, I had Caller Tunes for a while. It is pretty irritating.

UMA == Unlicensed Mobile Access, which is easiest explained by saying "Its VoIP for a cellphone, using a WiFi router and the WiFi antenna on the handset." I honestly believe its the future of mobile technology, as it is WAAAAY cheaper to do it that way than to expand areas using a series of BTSes. Mark my words....5 years from now, this is the way Mobile technology will work.
 
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SkyHog said:
UMA == Unlicensed Mobile Access, which is easiest explained by saying "Its VoIP for a cellphone, using a WiFi router and the WiFi antenna on the handset." I honestly believe its the future of mobile technology, as it is WAAAAY cheaper to do it that way than to expand areas using a series of BTSes. Mark my words....5 years from now, this is the way Mobile technology will work.
Click to expand...

While I agree with you that UMA does indeed appear to be the future model for mobile communications, it will never provide the complete solution. Currently, UMA is nothing more than a play by the carriers (TMO here in the US) to get their hands on some of your home telephone traffic. What better way to encourage you to go exclusively mobile than offering you great coverage at home?! It also gets you off of their network and frees up their capacity to serve other (higher ARPU) customers. As I said before though, it will never provide the complete solution as a the most important aspect of mobile phones and networks is just that, mobility. There are too many holes in UMA, from coverage to bandwidth guarantees to privacy concerns (I sure as hell don't want somebody using the broadband connection I'm paying for to make calls on their cell phone), to allow it to serve as the basis for a cellular network.

All that being said, VoIP is definitely the way that cellular technologies are headed. I did some amazingly cool work back in 2003-2004 with PTT over GPRS and it really opened my eyes as to just how inefficient circuit-switched voice connections can be. Its crazy how little bandwidth is required to hold a conversation... Now its just a matter of letting all of the competing VoIP-based standards (LTE, WiMAX, WiBro, etc) duke it out!

Jason
 
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