T-Mobile Talks Up Apple

[Shagrat]

The follow-up to that statement is usually "soccer is for wimps"

Then try Rugby instead! Like American football without stopping the game every 10 seconds, and without all the body armour!

 

[Shagrat]

And what's with this paying for incoming minutes thing? The payment should be the responsibility of the person doing the calling. At least, that's how it seems to work over here.

Seems to work like that in Europe, i guess. If I call someone in France for instance, then they have to pay at least some of the incoming call.

In the UK the caller pays for the call which seems the sensible way of doing things.

I do get dropped calls, here, though, but's that's 'cause I use a cheap-ass Pay as you go card with Virgin, who piggy-back on to other networks, it sems. But not often, it has to be said.

 

[firsttube]

Speaking as a T-Mobile customer, I would LOVE to have Apple working with them on the iPhone.

It would make sense in a way. T-Mobile doesn't cripple their phones, unlike most of the other carriers here in the US (That's largely why I left Verizon for T-Mobile a year or so ago). An uncrippled phone would mean an iPhone that actually works the way Apple envisions.

I have a samsung t-809 with t-mobile as my provider. video-out, and the ability to customizable the four way keys (to something other then what they do out of the box) are disabled on the phone, along with a few other features (like the ability to ring and vibrate simultaneously... how silly!). So maybe they don't cripple them to the extent of other carriers, but they certainly still cripple them.

 

[pdxflint]

I have a samsung t-809 with t-mobile as my provider. video-out, and the ability to customizable the four way keys (to something other then what they do out of the box) are disabled on the phone, along with a few other features (like the ability to ring and vibrate simultaneously... how silly!). So maybe they don't cripple them to the extent of other carriers, but they certainly still cripple them.

Well, you got unlucky... my Moto v180 and v360 are both un-crippled, and I can customize my soft keys at top level, and the four-way button. I'd check into that with CS.

 

[color guy]

The only thing worse than crappy cell phone companies would be someone that thinks the government could make it better. What motivation does the govt. have to make cell phone companies better? Votes. That's it. Votes. The only motivation that government has. So they'll promise you that they'll make it better. You'll vote for them. They'll spend money regulating whatever you think needs regulating. They'll create a branch that costs some upzillion dollars. Cell phone companies will be forced to comply with some ridiculous something or other. They'll up your bill by placing a charge on it called the "rsoo tax" to pay for it. The cell phone companies will all still treat you badly. Vote with your feet. Keep switching carriers. Don't blow your cash on idiotic features for idiotic prices. The companies will comply and compete for your business.



The cell companies lobbied HARD to not allow you to keep your number when you switch. The state legislature here (Calif) buckled 3 times.
You can thank "the government" for allowing you to keep your number when you switch. You can also thank "the government" for demanding that the companies improve their 911 protocols. People were sometimes
waiting 20 minutes to get connected. Also, blame "the government"
for requiring that the companies allow you a grace period to return your phone. They actually had to create a bill called "the cell phone bill of rights"
These actions did not create a huge costly layer of bureaucracy. Why do people think that corporations should be allowed to abuse people unhindered? After-all the market was/is not providing that many real choices. It's a cartel.
Bye the way, "the government" (in theory) is you.

 

[bousozoku]

The cell companies lobbied HARD to not allow you to keep your number when you switch. The state legislature here (Calif) buckled 3 times.
You can thank "the government" for allowing you to keep your number when you switch. You can also thank "the government" for demanding that the companies improve their 911 protocols. People were sometimes
waiting 20 minutes to get connected. Also, blame "the government"
for requiring that the companies allow you a grace period to return your phone. They actually had to create a bill called "the cell phone bill of rights"
These actions did not create a huge costly layer of bureaucracy. Why do people think that corporations should be allowed to abuse people unhindered? After-all the market was/is not providing that many real choices. It's a cartel.
Bye the way, "the government" (in theory) is you.

We are lucky that sometimes government works for us. The state government here bowed to the mobile phone companies when municipalities wanted to enact laws banning using a phone while driving. They banned anyone but the state being able to create any laws concerning mobile phones.

Of course, I wouldn't want the government to have their own company--that would be haphazard and bizarre, though I don't think anyone would buy service from them, suspecting wire(less) tapping on all of their phones.

 

[peharri]

T-Mobile in my area rents its airtime on Cingular's network. This is coming from 2 friends, one who works for T-Mobile and one works Cingular

While this is true in your area, it doesn't contradict what I said.

T-Mobile, contrary to what the person I was replying to said, does have its own network. In most areas where it operates, it is not using Cingular's network. In some areas, it uses Cingular's, and in others Cingular uses its, but in most areas, they're both independent of one another.

T-Mobile is the aggregate of most of the independent GSM operators that were coming online in the late nineties. Most of them were bought by Voicestream, T-Mobile took over Voicestream and then bought Powertel.

 

[peharri]

Every iPhone thread leaves me amazed at how complacent Americans are in accepting terrible mobile telephony. When's the last time (in Europe) that you had a "dropped call"? I had to look up the term because it meant nothing to me. If the iPhone is going to work properly, then someone needs to give assurances that your calls will actually go through. Forget about downloading songs on the go for a moment, and consider the intended purpose of a phone. If I want to make a call, it means that I need to get through and actually end up talking to someone; not that I want to try to call someone. Don't get me wrong, I'd love an iPhone. I'm just glad I live in a country where your calls go through, and stay going until you terminate it. And what's with this paying for incoming minutes thing? The payment should be the responsibility of the person doing the calling. At least, that's how it seems to work over here.

Well, maybe things have improved since I left, but I certainly had the occasional dropped call when I lived in Britain. Its the nature of the technology.

While advocates of CDMA argue that in theory it should be more robust against dropped calls than other types of network, my worst experience was on Sprint PCS, which uses IS-95, the US CDMA standard. But I've not had any serious problems with either AT&T WS (now Cingular) or T-Mobile, certainly no more than I had with one2one or Orange.

As far as the last part goes, there are two ways to view the "who pays for the call" argument, and neither is the "wrong" one:

1. The person who decided to make the call should pay for it.
2. The person who determined the network they're going to be available on should pay for their part of the call, because their choice determined how expensive it would be.

(2) works very well if you're trying to replace your landline with a cellphone, as you're not forcing everyone, your friends, your family, etc, to pay premium rates to call you. Typical talk plans in the US include so many bundled minutes and unmetered calling periods and types that incoming calls are not a source of fear, and "my cellphone as my only phone" is a real practical proposition, which it just plain isn't in Britain.

However, (1) makes low user tariffs such as PAYG much more practical, and also means you're not in the awkward position of having to claim back minutes used by your boss, etc.

One is not superior to the other. I'd prefer the tariff I'm on to one where incoming minutes are charged at excessive rates to callers (up to 40p - 70c per minute for mobile to mobile calls in Britain, last time I looked) given my needs and circumstances, but if my phone was an emergency phone that I didn't plan to make many calls on and preferred to use pre-paid, I'd probably prefer paid-for incoming calls.

 

[needthephone]

It seems like only the US will be getting this phone if it happens.

The US Mobile phone network is antiquated compared to the rest of the world (well most of it) who are embracing the second generation of 3G (http://www.nextg.com.au/, http://www.three.com.au) ). At best this apple phone is rumoiured to be GSM... It may have the music player capabilities to die for but if I can't use it to make free video calls with my wife I am not interested. I hope I am wrong and they are looking at the rest of the world too.
http://www.t-mobile.com/ seems pretty ho hum in this day and age.

 

[peharri]

One interesting bit of information about T-Mobile most people are unaware of.

As TFA mentions, this press conference centered around T-Mobile's 3G plans, after they won a large amount of spectrum in the recent FCC auctions.

What's interesting is the amount of spectrum they won. They essentially won spectrum in every single US market in the USA, including Hawaii and Alaska. This makes them the first network in the US that really could, if it wanted to, cover the entire USA with their own network.

For reasons that escape me, the FCC has always subdivided the country into small areas, some as small as a county, when auctioning licenses. I think this is because the FCC is pretty convinced that cellphones are actually just a form of long range cordless phone and nobody expects them to work more than a few miles from home or something.

This time the FCC auctioned much larger areas, called REAs, overlapping a lot of much smaller areas that were also licensed, called BEAs and CMAs. T-Mobile won one of each of the REAs, the largest areas, with the exception of Alaska. They were also won a BEA which is one of the few that is large enough to cover an entire state - namely, Alaska.

I'm not saying T-Mobile will roll out a truly "works everywhere" network. The frequencies chosen for 3G are high (1750MHz downlink and 2150MHz uplink), so the whole "goes through walls" problem that T-Mobile currently suffers from (their current network is 1900MHz) isn't going to get any better. And clearly, there's little economic incentive to put a tower in the middle of a desert, whether you have a license for it or not. But certainly they have the capability now of doing so, and providing coverage everywhere, which is pretty cool.

 

[sfwalter]

Maybe T-Mobile is just trying to get on Apple's good side. They wouldn't be the first

 

[pennsive]

reading the article....

Did you miss this from the article???

"The 3G network will be complemented by UMA, which lets phone calls transition between cellular and Wi-Fi to enhance indoor coverage. But we'll only see "market trials" of UMA this year, according to Dotson"

Last time I heard 'Market Trial' was ITMS on a Mac.......

 

[babyj]

The US mobile market appears to be totally different to the UK and other countries, in the UK; a phone will work on any network (though some have to be unlocked first), full coverage across the country (except for some remote areas) and most other countries via roaming, short contacts (12 months, with cheaper 18 month contracts recently launched), a wide choice of free phones, texting is massively popular.

You never pay for incoming calls, unless you are abroad and even then it is under 20p a minute in most countries - making outgoing calls in other countries is pretty cheap as well. Competition is growing with prices dropping, plus the EU is forcing price reductions for certain calls.

Single provider bundles of mobile phone, landline phone, cable / satellite tv and broadband is the big thing at the moment and is only going to get more popular.

Whilst the US is their home market it might be easier to launch a phone in another country. They could launch their own mobile service in the UK pretty easily, as there is already a number of mobile providers which don't own their own network and just rent off others. There wouldn't be any need for them to go with a single network either, you don't get much in the way of exclusives in the UK other than colour variations.

Some people seem to think that we don't use mobiles just as mobiles in the UK. Other than texting (which is popular) other services have never taken off - the percentage of people browsing the internet via their mobile is pretty low for example.

 

[yg17]

I don't mind being charged for incoming calls for 2 reasons:

1. I've got a shitton of minutes available so I don't actually pay anything out of pocket.

2. I call other people's cell phones quite often. I don't have to pay so it saves me money


Even assuming I didn't have minutes and had to actually pay out of pocket for incoming calls, I call other cells enough that it would pretty much even out anyways.

 

[bousozoku]

While this is true in your area, it doesn't contradict what I said.

T-Mobile, contrary to what the person I was replying to said, does have its own network. In most areas where it operates, it is not using Cingular's network. In some areas, it uses Cingular's, and in others Cingular uses its, but in most areas, they're both independent of one another.

T-Mobile is the aggregate of most of the independent GSM operators that were coming online in the late nineties. Most of them were bought by Voicestream, T-Mobile took over Voicestream and then bought Powertel.

True. I had an Aerial phone from 1999-2000 and toward the end, the company was bought by Voicestream, which must have gotten all 15 of Aerial's towers in the U.S.A. Verizon got the little purple alien's phone company.

 

[Lord Bodak]

I still can't believe you lot in the USA have gone for yet another incompatible-with-the-rest-of-the-world frequency for your 3G network meaning that anyone coming to the USA won't be able to use your 3G network and your 3G iPhones will be about as useful as a one legged dog outside the USA.

I'm amazed at the news too. One of the things T-Mobile had going for it is they were one of only two large providers (with Cingular) in the US that used an international standard. It's sad to see them switch away from it.

 

[jsw]

Interesting "let's calm down" comments from Gizmodo - with which I happen to agree.

 

[peharri]

I'm amazed at the news too. One of the things T-Mobile had going for it is they were one of only two large providers (with Cingular) in the US that used an international standard. It's sad to see them switch away from it.

T-Mobile is adding a UMTS network to their existing GSM network. Like Cingular, they run GSM on 1900MHz (Cingular also uses 850) because the 1800/900 frequencies available outside the US are not available in the US.

T-Mobile's UMTS network will be running on 2.1/1.7GHz. Again, the 2.1/1.9GHz frequencies used by UMTS in other countries are not available in the US.

There is no change in their support for international standards. Other than operating frequencies - something they have no control over - they're implementing the exact same standards that, say, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, and O2 are implementing in the UK. GSM on some frequencies. 3GSM (UMTS) on others.

 

[mi5moav]

How do we know that Apple did not help TMO acquire some of that extra bandwidth?

 

[Telekom]

Why European mobile service is better.

Almost everyone gets free incoming minutes.

Yeah, and you also let the person calling you pay a tarriff up to four times the rate of a fixed line call. Calling a mobile number can cost five times as much as making an international call 20.000 kilometres away. Ever wonder why Europeans don't use their mobiles to make voice calls?

 

[Telekom]

This is a total no-brainer. T-Mobile doesn't have it's own network, it rents its airtime from Cingular...

Excuse me... what planet did you say you lived on? T-Mobile has always had their own network. At one time they shared infrastructure with cingular in California and Nevada and T-Mobile shared their metro NYC market with cingular.

 

[Telekom]

T-Mobile in my area rents its airtime on Cingular's network. This is coming from 2 friends, one who works for T-Mobile and one works Cingular

You really do need to get out more It's called roaming coverage. If they don't cover an area they roam on another carrier if there is a roaming agreement. T-Mobile (and cingular for that matter) do not operate in Canada and if you want to use your service in Canada you roam on the ROGERS network. T-Mobile doesn't have service in parts of Maine and VermontThey roam on Unicel. In Wisconsin T-Mobile roams in certain places on Einstein PCS. It's no big deal. All carriers roam on other carriers' networks. Alltell roams on Verizon. Sprint roams on Verizon in some places.

 

[peharri]

Hate to say it...

But this is the speech, and it contains ONE mention of Apple. I mean, the way the news reports were worded, you'd think that he was saying rather more than mentioning it in passing.

All he says is that Leopard has a pretty good email client (he's talking about the richness of email in the future, and is obviously impressed with what Steve Jobs has thus-far demonstrated.)

He also mentions Geico Insurance, FedEx, and Marriot hotels. And YouTube, and MySpace. And Verizon.

This is a non-story.

For those too lazy to click the link, here's what he has to say:

Third, the high bandwidth potential of 3G will be utilized to take consumer-based PC functionality mobile. The “Web ‘N Walk” services we see in Europe today is a precursor of the even larger opportunity in the U.S. market given broadband penetration and usage which has exploded over the past 24 months. A further example of untapped opportunity is mobile consumer e-mail. Today, only 5% of current consumer e-mail is being accessed in a mobile environment. And as can be seen with Apple’s new Leopard operating system – the richness of e-mail communications is just beginning to discover elements beyond the printed word – moving to dynamic and personally tailored image-rich communications.

That's it. That's the only mention of Apple. That single sentence in one paragraph.

WHY is this on Page 1?