Technologizer » T-Mobile

One Small Step for Wireless Customers

Harry McCracken — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:43:04 +0000

I don’t like signing up for two-year contracts when I buy a phone–in fact, I’ve frequently chosen to buy phones at full price and therefore avoid the commitment. But there’s been one giant argument against doing so: Wireless carriers charge folks who pay up front for a phone exactly the same monthly fee that they get from customers who opt to get the phone cheap in return for signing a contract.

Effectively, full-price phone buyers are paying back the subsidy to the carrier even though they weren’t subsidized in the first place. That’s why I reluctantly but rationally signed up for a two-year Verizon contract last week when I bought a Droid. (The Droid only works on Verizon in the first place, so it’s not like I have the option of leaving the carrier a few months from now and using the handset with another carrier.)

Now T-Mobile has become the first U.S. carrier to do the right thing: As Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times reports, it’s charging people who pay list price for phones less for monthly service than it does subsidy customers. By forgoing the subsidy, you’ll save money over the long run and won’t be locked into a relationship with T-Mobile; assuming you’ve got the cash on hand, it clearly becomes the smartest way to buy a phone.

Bravo, T-Mobile. May AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon follow your lead…

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FCC Gets Google To Cut Nexus One Return Fee By $200

Ed Oswald — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:02:38 +0000

Google’s $350 “Equipment Recovery Fee” has pretty much received a universally poor reception among consumers. Complaints have flooded user forums, and apparently some have taken it as far as the Federal Communications Commission. Good news: the FCC’s intervention has seemed to have forced the company’s hand.

Effective immediately, the fee has been dropped to $150. This would not allow a user to escape T-Mobile’s $200 early termination fee — that would still be due to the carrier outside of it’s normal 14-day return period. To be fair to Google, it seems as if people’s complaints are more about the service than the device itself.

Being a former T-Mobile subscriber (and one for nearly seven years before switching to AT&T), I feel these people’s pain. Service when you have it is good — however 3G is extremely spotty, and in many rural locales you will have absolutely no service at all.

Now, in the defense of T-Mobile and Google, company officials are saying they are not making these changes due to pressure from the FCC. Needless to say — the FCC has been looking into these excess charges, which several commissioners have already said they thought were too excessive — and the commission itself has received thousands of complaints from consumers.

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Nexus One Specs

Harry McCracken — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:25:42 +0000

Engadget has what are allegedly detailed specs for Google’s Nexus One Android phone. (They look nice, but not particularly enthralling–although it’s supposed to have an OLED screen, which is a pro.) Engadget’s tipster says that the phone will be invite-only at first (like Gmail or Google Voice, I guess). It’s also said to run a flavor of wireless connectivity that only does 3G on T-Mobile in the U.S.–on AT&T, you’d drop back to EDGE. That sounds like a major limitation, and one that essentially makes this a T-Mobile phone, whether or not it’s sold unlocked and/or without a subsidy or contract…

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Verizon’s Getting Ready for the iPhone, Just in Case

Ed Oswald — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:19:37 +0000

If the iPhone is really no longer an AT&T exclusive in the new year as many analysts are now suggesting and/or predicting, at least one carrier doesn’t want to get caught with its pants down. Verizon Wireless says it has made the changes it would need to make to its network in order to handle what would obviously be a new surge in data traffic.

Better to be safe than sorry, I guess?

Quite a surprising statement considering the company is spending quite a bit of money putting down Apple in its “Droid Does” ads that we’ve all been getting peppered with for the past two months plus. But in a way it’s not because Verizon has watched as AT&T’s network problems have become a serious liability to the company, “Operation Chokehold” notwithstanding.

“Absolutely, I think we could handle it,” Verizon Wireless CTO Anthony Melone told BusinessWeek in an interview. Now, lets not get the story twisted here: Melone is not saying there is any deal yet, but its pretty much common knowledge that the two sides have at least discussed possible partnerships in the past.

Verizon has gone the opposite way of AT&T over the past several years in investing in network infrastructure, spending about $19 billion on the network itself over the past three years. As Gizmodo points out, AT&T’s spending since the iPhone launch on the network itself has actually decreased.

With Verizon readily talking about it’s iPhone readiness, I wonder if T-Mobile USA will start making overtures as well. The carrier has been mentioned much more often recently as a logical next carrier for the device, as it would take minimal changes (adding TMUS’ 1700MHz band to the 3G chip of the iPhone) for it to work.

Going to Verizon — and CDMA — requires a much more involved rework of the device. Going to be an interesting 2010 in iPhoneland, that’s for sure.

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Googlephone. Plus a Contract. No Big Whoop?

Harry McCracken — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:39:03 +0000

Latest Googlephone rumor: Reuters is now reporting that Google’s Nexus One will be sold at a subsidized price on T-Mobile, possibly starting as soon as January 5th. Even if it’s also available unlocked and without a discount, a Googlephone that’s sold primarily through a carrier using the current contract-price business model sounds like it’s a lot less likely to be a game-changer. It might not amount to that much more than an HTC phone sold through T-Mobile, with a heavier quotient of Google in its its DNA (is that a mixed metaphor?) than usual…

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Department of Misleading Headlines

Harry McCracken — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:25:25 +0000

Scott Moritz, at TheStreet.com:

Um, read the story, and you’ll find it presents no evidence that Apple is contemplating a T-Mobile deal. All you get is an analyst speculating that Verizon isn’t going to get the iPhone soon, and speculating that if Apple wants to end AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity it might logically cut a deal with T-Mobile. But it’s all guesswork.

The analyst says that he expects that a Verizon iPhone will appear only in 2011, and that it’ll use a 4G LTE data connection rather than Verizon’s current EVDO network. Sounds logical enough. If you assume that Verizon’s current spree of iPhone bashing means it’s not going to announce an Apple deal immediately, it feels more and more likely that Apple and Verizon will skip the dead-end technology an EVDO iPhone would bring and jump directly to an LTE model. And it’s going to be 2011 before an LTE iPhone makes sense.

Or so I think. I cheerfully concede that I could be wrong. Which is why this post isn’t titled “No Verizon iPhone Until 2011…”

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Sidekick Sales Resuming

Ed Oswald — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:46:37 +0000

If you’re brave enough to want a Sidekick from T-Mobile after last month’s data loss fiasco, wait no longer. The carrier has resumed sales of the device, even throwing a price cut in for good measure. The older Sidekick 2008 is $49.99, and the fancier Sidekick LX will retail for $149.99, both with a two-year contract commitment. The meager price drops (about $25) may not be enough for many to take a chance on the company, however.

At least two states, California and Washington, are in the process of suing the company over the data loss. T-Mobile itself has done a little damage control by giving $100 credits to unhappy customers. All in all, October was a month the carrier would like to forget. Let’s just hope this time they have a backup…

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Microsoft: “Steady Progress” on Sidekick Data Restore

Ed Oswald — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:39:45 +0000

Good news for those of us out there affected by the Sidekick data mess: Microsoft on Monday said that it was continuing to work “around the clock” on the problem, and was making “steady progress” in attempting to restore data. The first of the user content to be restored would be user contacts (probably the most important for most of us), with photographs, notes, to-do-lists, marketplace data, and high scores to follow later.

No exact time frame has been given for the full restore. However, for those who have been affected by the issue (I actually met somebody over the weekend that lost nothing, so it’s not everybody), this is now two weeks after the initial data loss. You have to figure that many have recovered most of their data through other means, so a restore is becoming less and less useful.

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“Always On,” Eh?

Harry McCracken — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:35:50 +0000

T-Mobile may have halted sales of Sidekicks, but its marketing materials for the phone are still up and available. And they seem to be mocking T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger. I wonder if references to “always on” apps henceforth will have to be asterisked with a disclaimer: “Unless we suffer a lengthy outage and turn out to have lost most of our customers’ data…”

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Sidekick Disaster: How to Make Amends?

Harry McCracken — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:31:53 +0000

A little more news on the Sidekick data disaster: CNET’s Ina Fried is reporting that T-Mobile has halted sales of the device. And John Herrman of Gizmodo has a post about offers apparently being made by T-Mobile reps to affected customers, none of which sound like appropriate responses to the enormity of what’s apparently happened: a month of free service, a small discount on another phone, and the ability to get out of a contract without paying a penalty.

Presumably, what Sidekick users really want is to keep on using their Sidekicks with the data they thought was safe and sound. But if their stuff really is gone, what would be an adequate action on the part of T-Mobile and/or Microsoft? Free service for a year? Two years? Three? A cash payment of $250? $500? $1000? Immediate upgrade to any device sold by the carrier at no cost?

I’m dying to know what you think–especially if you’re a Sidekick owner…

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