Well somehow this skipped our radar yesterday but apparently T-Mobile laid out “aggressive” plans to deploy 7.2 Mbps HSPA through all 3G spectrum by year’s end. Even more noteworthy is T-Mobile’s continued discussion regarding an HSPA+ rollout in 2010 that would be a “fairly broad scale” rollout. T-Mobile continued to emphasize 3G coverage will expand to 200 million pops before the end of 2009 with 240 cities currently covered. This contrasts to the AT&T and Verizon plans to launch LTE in the coming 2010-2011 timeframe which allows for a competitive environment as the initial LTE launches will compete with HSPA+ for speed. T-Mobile is apparently emphasizing that it will not have to pour “tens of billions of dollars behind to achieve” these speeds and can do so with a relatively easy upgrade to HSPA+. Still, we know T-Mobile has plans for 4G but the HSPA+ speeds give them some leeway in rolling that out. Customers will see other carriers progressing with technology still, hear that “4G” phrase and assume other companies have better, faster service. It’ll be up to T-Mobile to disprove that.
Combined with this announcement was the release of the T-Mobile JET, the second USB broadband modem in the magenta arsenal. For customers still looking to hop on that contract bandwagon this little goody will cost you zero, zilch to pickup and $49.99 to run monthly. Want to run sans contract, $150 dollars will net you the Jet with that promotional $49.99 offering running through mid-January.