After completing its 3G network upgrade, T-Mobile is now looking forward to deploy 4G in the country. As per the company it is banking upon Evolved High Speed Packet Access (HSPA+) for deploying 4G. Its trial is in progress in Philadelphia.
T-Mobile, which uses High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and offers downlink speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps (peak speed) on its 3G network, now covers over 200 million Americans, the company said.
At present though the US is not fully covered by 3G, few of the service providers are already in the process to move one step up in the technology ladder. Sprint was the first carrier in the country to put a true 4G network in place. While Sprint uses WiMax, T-Mobile on a later stage plans to use LTE (Long Term Evolution), a major competitor of WiMax.
Once T-Mobile upgrades itself to HSPA+, which the company plans to accomplish by this year end, it can then provide downlink speeds of up to 56 Mbps and uplink speeds up to 22 Mbps. Then T-Mobile will be the fastest of GSM providers in the US in terms of data transfer. However, the biggest drawback of the system is that the actual performance of the service will depend on the user’s closeness to a T-Mobile tower.
Meanwhile, the biggest boost to T-Mobile is set to come from Google’s new Android-based smartphone, Nexus One. To start with Google has picked up the service provider as the sole carrier for its new phone. This means a user can find a Nexus One either directly from Google or from T-Mobile. Moreover, Nexus One, at the T-Mobile, counter can be availed at a discount with specified terms and conditions though. T-Mobile will enjoy the exclusive carrier of Nexus One status for the complete first quarter of 2010.