Ina Fried

Recent Posts by Ina Fried

T-Mobile Says Network Is Finally iPhone-Ready, at Least in Las Vegas

Though it still doesn’t have an iPhone to sell, T-Mobile continues to plug away on its effort to enable those bringing their own iPhone to at least get 3G speeds.

The company has hit a milestone on that front, with its Las Vegas-area network now fully iPhone-friendly.

The effort to make its network more iPhone-compatible is part of the company’s big “bring-your-own-iPhone” push.

“As we retune our airwaves to turn on 4G service in our iPhone compatible spectrum in major markets this year, our network is becoming compatible with a broader range of unlocked devices,” CTO Neville Ray said in a blog post on Monday. “Las Vegas is the first of many markets where we’ll strengthen the network this year. … With some sites live in other cities, including Seattle, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and the New York metro area, customers are already experiencing improved coverage and iPhone ‘speed sightings’ on T-Mobile’s 4G network.”

The company also has a brand-new CEO who has promised the carrier will fight to regain lost ground against the Big 3 U.S. carriers.

Ray said internal testing shows the iPhone 4S running faster on T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network in Las Vegas than on AT&T.

Until now, customers have been able to run an unlocked iPhone on T-Mobile’s network but have been limited to very slow 2G data speeds. Nonetheless, the company has more than 1 million iPhones running on its network.

That said, the iPhone is now speeding ahead into LTE territory, with the iPhone 5 now supporting that higher-speed network on Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint.

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik