More T-Mobile 3G rumors
The latest dish from the cell phone rumor mill says that T-Mobile will switch on its long-awaited 3G network on December 6. According to the a maddeningly vague, and somewhat illogical, article posted on the Inquirer's Web site (no, not the National Enquirer), a T-Mobile representative told a customer in Washington that the carrier would activate 3G service in the Seattle area "on or before 6 December 2007." T-Mobile still has not made public its 3G launch date, but it did release a 3G-capable phone, the Samsung SGH-T639, earlier this month.
While the article provides no facts to back up the prediction, it makes some interesting claims. First, it suggests that T-Mobile could utilize the 2100 HSDPA band in the United States instead of the 1900 band, which is the standard here. (The 2100 band is used in Europe, however.) That seems unlikely for a number of reasons, but the Inquirer also proposed that T-Mobile could pick up the Nokia N95 and N82. Yet the article's most peculiar theory suggests that T-Mobile's German parent company has put it at a disadvantage in receiving 3G spectrum allocation from the U.S. federal government. "The fact that [T-Mobile] is less keen to help the Department of Homeland security in its terrorist sweeps, have apparently locked it out of the spectrum acquisition," the Inquirer said. Achtung! Get out your tinfoil hats!
Kent German is a senior editor for cell phone reviews at CNET. When he's not testing the newest handsets on the market, he's blogging about cell phone news for Crave. In his On Call column, he answers reader questions and gives his take on the rapidly changing mobile industry. E-mail Kent. 
- TMO 3G Plans
- by techgaltx February 19, 2008 3:29 PM PST
- TMO does need band IV phones. They do not exist on the market. Manufacturers have to develop tranceivers and PA's for this band. From a year ago, TMO was planning to launch 1.7GHz 3G service in Q4'07. Guess they are late ...
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