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T-Mobile Unveils 3G: Too Little, Too Late?
05 May, 2008
T-Mobile is rolling out 3G services in New York City today. They join their larger mobile brethren, Verizon and Sprint, who have enjoyed a considerable 3G lead on T-Mobile. Sprint is already moving on 4G plans, with Xohm. What’s taken T-Mobile so long? Probably a variety of factors, with spectrum availability towards the top of the list. As for the current launch, T-Mobile will utilize an UMTS/HSDPA network, starting in New York City and expanding into 20-25 other markets throughout the rest of the year. Initial data speeds for the service will range from 200 Kbps to 300 Kbps, with an increase by two fold soon after when the HSPDA portion of the network becomes operational.
Since Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, and others have had such a lead in offering 3G services, one has to wonder how much of a market is left. The answer is a significant one. Even though T-Mobile’s competitors have had a fair lead, we are still at the beginning of the 3G growth curve. T-Mobile should do just fine, but it may take a while for them to see mainstream adoption of 3G. Verizon and Sprint have probably already captured the low hanging fruit. T-Mobile does have a younger customer demographic, so they’ll have some real opportunity to convert those technology hungry customers to a 3G product.
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Featured Article
Clearwire Outlines 4G World Domination Plans
12 Jun, 2008
Clearwire is feeling quite confident these days. The emerging WiMAX provider held an investor conference and outlined their plan for 4G domination. We're "building the communications company of the future, today," says Clearwire CEO Ben Wolf. Clearwire chief strategy officer Scott Richardson calls it "the second coming of the Internet." It was quite the WiMAX pep rally. Clearwire executives say they intend to build a seamless nationwide 4G network way ahead of their competitors, namely Verizon and AT&T.
From a powerpointware perspective, the strategy looks real impressive. Clearwire intends to offer a five product suite of services which will include residential voice and broadband, mobile voice and broadband, and mobile entertainment. They intend to leverage their investor partners considerably, gaining access to tens of millions of existing subscriber relationships immediately. With their cable company partners, they intend to extend the cable entertainment experience "into the palms of consumer's hands." They intend to utilize Google's Android platform for a suite of "compelling" mobile applications. Intel will contribute by powering millions of end user devices and do for WiMAX what it did for Wi-Fi, in effect bringing it to the mainstream. Wolf says that the average consumer's total household spend on communications, ranging from $109-$258, is up for grabs, and they intend to capture as much of it as possible.