BELLEVUE, Wash. -- T-Mobile USA, Inc. continues to aggressively expand its third-generation (3G) wireless broadband service, announcing today that the company will launch 3G service in and around the Washington, D.C., area in late November. At that time, the number of locations with T-Mobile’s 3G coverage will amount to more than 120 major cities across the top population centers nationwide.
This week, T-Mobile 3G coverage launched in the Sacramento, Calif., area bringing the number of major cities currently served with 3G coverage to 92. Next week, communities in and around Memphis, Tenn., and Tampa, Fla., will be the latest to reap the benefits of wireless broadband service from T-Mobile.
“We’re excited about the broad scale and reach of our 3G footprint in major cities across the nation, already accessible by tens of millions of consumers. And today, where the majority of our customers use data services, our 3G network is there for them,“ said Neville Ray, senior vice president of Engineering and Operations, T-Mobile USA. “Our 3G footprint will continue to expand, and we look forward to continuing to deliver the rich experiences a 3G network can bring to T-Mobile customers.”
We are located along the coast in the northwest corner of San Diego county, separated from the LA Metroplex and isolated topographically from San Diego. Our field of interest is great camera/cell phones.
We tried in vain to get AT&T to provide a single solution to the problem of a high definition camera with SDHC micro card but they insisted that such features automatically elevated the device into a PDA category and we were compelled to purchase a $30 per month data plan. We didn't need such a plan because for 4 years we have used a Sierra Wireless card with AT&T unlimited data plan on a separate line and we don't see any reason to squint at a mobile device when we have notebooks available for the full internet experience.
So we began to shop for the highest quality camera/cell phone we could find and ended up [July 2009] choosing the Samsung Memoir, which is only available at T-Mobile. We tested the still and video camera capability before buying and T-Mobile assured us that we could buy the Memoir without purchasing a data plan.
The Memoir is certainly a most powerful 3G device so we "assumed" that 3G was available in our area. Extremely poor assumption! Movies taken panning the store showed no advertising posters or big time reference to 3G. The salesperson, a likeable guy, had been trained to "describe" their coverage charts as "areas of maximum signal strength". Since we had no plan to buy the data plan, sticking with our AT&T wirelesss card, we did not hone in on the errors of ommision in the sales process.
As the purchase finalized the sales person brought over our contract and used a magic marker to emphasize key points. High on the list was that there was no 3G coverage in our part of coastal southern California.
There is something inately wrong with the approach of both AT&T and T-Mobile in this story. Why does AT&T NOT provide high quality camera/cell phones [with SDHC micro memory cards] without insisting on a data plan? Why does T-Mobile provide high quality camera/cell phones without requiring a data plan?
We will wait the three months and get the Memoir unlock code as promised from T-Mobile. Than we will decide if there is any compelling reason to require 3G for our use of this camera/cell phone. Like will the voice quality of our calls be much better with 3G?
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