T-Mobile USA, the No. 4 U.S. mobile service, said on Monday it launched its first commercial high-speed wireless service in New York City, and plans to expand the service to 20 to 25 other major U.S. markets by the end of the year.
The launch will help the U.S. mobile unit of Deutsche Telekom AG catch up with rivals AT&T Inc, Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp, which have long sold fast mobile Web services to help boost revenue and keep users.
source: reteurs.com
The move comes amid reports that Deutsche Telekom is eyeing a purchase of Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. mobile service. T-Mobile USA and Sprint use incompatible network technologies.
The new service uses airwaves licenses T-Mobile bought for $4.2 billion in a U.S. government auction in November 2006. The service launch has been slowed by the company’s struggles to get previous owners to clear the airwaves.
The new service, based on a high-speed technology known as HSDPA, will boost T-Mobile Web speeds by about four times initially, with another doubling of data speeds once the company comes out with a new HSDPA phone in the third quarter.
Neville Ray, its vice president for engineering, said he expects the bulk of the target markets to be ready for HSDPA launches by the end of the third quarter in time for the fourth-quarter holiday shopping season.
Ray said T-Mobile USA, which has a high proportion of young customers who are heavy users of text messaging, expects faster Web speeds to encourage its customers to use their cell phones to access social network sites.
“That’s a core area for us, but not an exclusive one for us,” said Ray who also expects customers to use the higher speeds to share videos they’ve created themselves.
T-Mobile and Nokia today announced that they are collaborating to accelerate the availability of new Internet services and personal social communities on mobile devices.
By signing this collaboration agreement, T-Mobile and Nokia will be able to offer their European customers faster and easier access to all of T-Mobile’s web’n'walk Internet services as well as all to Nokia’s Ovi Internet services on a wide range of Nokia devices.
T-Mobile and Nokia will together drive the mobilization of social networks. The companies will partner to further enhance T-Mobile’s community-oriented MyFaves service, launched in October 2007 in Europe, empowered by the well-known Nokia user experience.
Widget cooperation is another focus area for the companies, where T-Mobile’s leading web’n'walk offering will provide an even richer user experience. T-Mobile’s web’n'walk offers customers an instant and customizable access to their most preferred Internet and messaging services.
For T-Mobile customers, Nokia will customize its devices to provide a dedicated suite of T-Mobile services which will be seamlessly integrated to Nokia devices. Similarly, T-Mobile customers can access Nokia’s Internet services, such as music, maps and games, through their Nokia device, which will offer T-Mobile customers a great opportunity to enjoy best-in-class Internet services.
In March T-Mobile and Nokia announced the exclusive Nokia 6650 device for T-Mobile which will be available in July in Europe. This collaboration is the next step in intensifying the good partnership between the companies.
“We are pleased about developing our long-lasting and successful cooperation with Nokia, which underlines our position as an innovation leader,” says Christopher Schlaffer, Group Product & Innovation Officer at Deutsche Telekom. “High-performance devices and our broadband mobile phone network are ideally suited for granting easy access to our T-Mobile Services like MyFaves, web’n'walk or Nokia-complementary service offerings (e.g. Maps or Games), providing our customers with an even wider range of mobile communication, information and entertainment services.”
“We are excited about further extending our good cooperation with T-Mobile by supporting them in their key propositions like My Faves and web’n'walk, and we see this as a perfect match with our Ovi services. Easy access to a wide variety of services will enhance the way people use their mobile devices and bring Web 2.0 experiences to life. We believe in providing consumers with choice regarding which Internet services they want to access from their mobile device,” said Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President, Markets, Nokia