T-Mobile USA, the US subsidiary of German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom (DT), announced a major upgrade to its nationwide 3G mobile broadband network. At the CTIA wireless conference in Las Vegas, the fourth-largest national carrier revealed its plans to expand its HSPA+ standard based 3G network footprint through 2010.
The operator plans to cover more than 100 metropolitan areas with HSPA+ by the end of 2010 addressing roughly 185 million Americans. The carrier has conducted live demonstration of the HSPA+ network at the CTIA Wireless 2010 on a variety of devices including Dell’s (DELL) Inspiron Mini 10 netbook.
T-Mobile will start selling Inspiron Mini 10, its first netbook for 3G network, from Mar 24, 2010. The device will be available online and at T-Mobile retail locations in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Miami. The company’s recently released HSPA+ USB laptop modem (“webConnect Rocket”) will effectively complement the new netbook.
T-Mobile USA joined the high-speed hoopla in the US with the upgrade of its 3G network to the HSPA 7.2 standard in January 2010. The network effectively doubled throughput offering peak downlink speeds of 7.2 megabits per second (Mbps).
Moreover, T-Mobile USA became the first carrier in the US to commercially deploy the HSPA+ network in Philadelphia. The network catapulted throughput by three-fold to offer peak downlink speeds of 21 Mbps.
The carrier has reportedly expanded HSPA+ network deployments to add new markets including parts of New York City, New Jersey, Long Island and suburban Washington DC, Los Angeles will soon be added to the network coverage. The nationwide network upgrade will offer super-fast 3G experience to the operator’s 33.8 million customers.
Although T-Mobile USA’s 3G network is the smallest among the big four carriers in the US, it has already covered a population of 206 million. Moreover, T-Mobile USA is the first operator to adopt Google’s (GOOG) Android platform and also the first official carrier for the search engine giant’s so-called “Superphone” Nexus One.
The HSPA+ network opens the door for T-Mobile USA for a smooth transition to the Long-Term Evolution (“LTE”) standard based 4G network, which the carrier targets deploying in 2011. The company’s bigger peers Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T) have also embraced LTE and plan to launch their respective networks in 2010-2011.
Besides providing the necessary support for bandwidth-intensive devices, the HSPA+ network is expected to limit churn (customer switch) through expanded network coverage and capacity. This represents an encouraging prospect as T-Mobile USA faces the challenges of stabilizing subscriber count.
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