Well it’s been a while since we’ve been able to announce 3G launches but we’re happy the dry streak has come to an end. Residents of Albany, GA, Amarillo and Abilene, TX rejoice in all that is 3G goodness. While 3G is all well and good, we know the ultimate desire of T-Mobile customers right now is wherefore art thou HSPA/HSPA? No details on that with today’s 3G announcements but with Christmas not too far off we’re hoping to get more details on that note soon, very soon. That’s all for now!
Related Posts:
Where is the 3G launch for Florida’s Capital City Tallahassee?
We still have no 3G on Trash Mobile.
Tmonews do some research and let me know.
Congratulations to the new 3g cities, but I’m more interested in the actual launch of tmo’s 7.2 hspa 3g. Normal 3g is very inconsistent on tmo. My speeds range from 400 down to 900 down. I have yet to top over 1mb down on any speed test that I use.
I think they throttle inorder to prevent network overloading.
No we don’t. The equipment is quite smart enough in balancing throughput. The rates all depend on how many circuits are connected to your site and how many people are using it. It sounds like your site, like most, only has a single T1 currently. Sites are beginning to be upgraded with multiple T1 circuits. As this happens, speeds will go up. The current maximum number is 4, but when HSPA+ comes in that all changes. At that point you have a extremely high maximum bandwidth to work with.
I wasn’t totally sure, you can easily get that assumption based on the way below 3.2mbps speeds. Still, that’s pretty pathetic. Lets improve 3G coverage in Las Vegas yes?
Many congrats to Albany, GA; Amarillo, TX; and Abilene, TX!!!
Now, the 19 largest US cities with no TMO 3G are:
Louisville, KY
Omaha, NE
Tulsa, OK
Cincinnati, OH
Lexington, KY
Anchorage, AK
Lincoln, NE
Fort Wayne, IN
Madison, WI
Boise, ID
Montgomery, AL
Grand Rapids, MI
Mobile, AL
Little Rock, AR
Fayetteville, NC
Jackson, MS
Tallahassee, FL
Springfield, MO
Sioux Falls, SD
And Erie, PA, fourth largest city in Pennsylvania, no 3G
Louisville and Lextington areas in KY get TMo 3G this Monday 12/3/09! That’s from the store reps themselves. Whoohoo!!
Store reps said that Louisville was getting 3G in March 2009, back in October 2008 when I bought the G1.
That’s great & all but how about putting up towers where there is NO coverage like 48451 and about 25 other zip codes nearby that used to work fine using ATT’s towers before they killed the roaming agreement. ANY signal at all would be nice let alone people bitchin they want HSDPA+.
Well, I was going to complain about people wanting their HSPA crap while lots of us don’t have 3G, and then you go and bring up zero coverage. I guess I’m glad I have Edge, but this is almost 2010. How can the competitors be so far ahead with covevrage by now?
You have NO idea how bad it is. Seriously, 80% of the area around is GPRS let alone even EDGE! (Yes in Ann Arbor or Flint & towards Detroit there are 3G areas but most people live in the burbs & most are GPRS *if* there is coverage) That is why TMo doesn’t differentiate GPRS from EDGE on their maps cuz they’d be ashamed! And I drive a lot so I know their maps are BS because the dead zones are much bigger than they lead you to believe. Exaggerated at least. I have a feeling they haven’t updated them since the ATT roaming agreement was dropped in our area. Owell, just means no google maps while driving. lol Anyway, it great TMo is finally getting some tower updates in but wow I’d kill just to have a signal let alone 21mbit or whatever that people are dreaming about.
If I were u I would just switch to a carrier that provided coverage in my area.
Give me the $1000 for early term fees for my 5 lines on Tmo & I’ll think about it.
Thanks for the advice, wish I had though of that! 
Some things are easier said that done unfortunately.
@Bill48105 – So you did you even look at the coverage map before you got service, or no?
Dear God. The coverage map changed this year because of the cancellation of the roaming agreement between ATT & TMo in our area. Because of that there are now lots of dead zones that were not there before. TMo should not have canceled that agreement until they had their own towers in place. Amen.
bill.
get hotspot@home (the linksys router is way better than the d-link).
i got it, unlimited calling for 10 bucks a month, no brainer.
now all i want is a UMA ANDROID as my g-1 does everything but voice over wifi and my samsung katalyst talks great over wifi and nothing else.
if you think you’re in the boonies, search out my zip
Yup, @Home rocks. Both the home-phone service & UMA wifi calling, I have both & use them up big time but neither helps me so much if I drive around.
Btw, UMA calling still works on new place (I’m still on MyFaves) but you can’t buy the unlimited option any more, at least that’s what 10 reps told me. Granted it still adds coverage but it is looking like TMo is quietly killing off UMA so I wouldn’t hold yer breath o n UMA android.
Boonies? Hell I’m not in the boonies! All around is heavily populated small towns & burbs. I mean one town to the next might only have 10k people BUT the townships, villages, cities, counties together add up to TONS of people. We’re just not all stacked on top of each other. To give you an idea here are some stats for area from google:
Washtenaw County: 347,376
Livingston County: 182,575
Genesee County: 428,790
Oakland County: 1,202,174
Jackson County: 668,417
I mean we’re no LA but not sure I’d call these areas the boonies cuz that is a crapload of people in a relatively small area.
Btw yer not even in a legit TMo area, just shows roaming. lol
Finally an upgrade to GPRS in Albany, Georgia.
Albany is my hometown and when I go there to visit my parents, I don’t even get EDGE on my Shadow. Do you know if EDGE is even showing up there now?
I was there last month and a “G” showed on my touch pro. They didn’t have edge so that is why this is a SERIOUS upgrade.
Same for Amarillo. Having GPRS-only there was very annoying to put up with on a smartphone.
Doesn’t it get yer goat that you pay the same price for internet on your phone as someone enjoying the full glory of 3G? hehe
Still no 3g in cincy! *sigh*
I’d be very surprised if Cincinnati got it before the end of 2009…
I didn’t realize that there was that many major cities without 3g service. I thought Boise, I’d already had it. I can understand peoples frustration if they are yet to have 3G in their area. Why would you buy a 3G phone when you cannot enjoy the 3G speeds? It doesn’t make sense, unless you transfer out od your area or just absolutely love a phone that supports 3G. In my area my 3G goes onto Edge every now and again. Sometimes I feel my 3G isn’t as fast as it should be, but its not a major concern at the moment.
Now as for the HSPA, is this considered to be 4G? How much faster would it be than 3G? Does any carrier/carriers have this service yet?
- anthony
As Grr pointed out many cell sites have just 1 T1 (that is 1.544mbit raw speed btw) so no surprise 3G speed varies so much because it is more dependant on how many fools are running speed tests on the tower at the same time than the wireless signal or technology. That is why I often get faster speeds on GPRS than EDGE in many areas. Can’t be surprised of slow speeds when back haul is a lonely 1 1/2 mbit pipe.
But kudos to TMo for recognizing that & working on either bundling T’s or even fiber where they can because that will make a much bigger difference than moving to HSDPA+ since without the back end capacity it wouldn’t likely be any faster. Might even be slower as people run their bandwidth tests repeatedly. lol
Tmonews doesn’t have complete list of 3g cities and t-mobiles coverage chart is wrong as well the city I live in has 3g coverage and so does surrounding cites (victorville? Hesperia, oak hills apple valley and adelanto california all have 3g but tmonews or t-mobile don’t list them as 3/ cities
To those complaining about Cincinnati I think I might have an explanation. Cincinnati Bell runs on the same 3G frequency as T-mobile and their 3G has been up and running for a while. I have a good friend who runs a G1 on Cincinnati Bell 3G. So perhaps something got screwed up contract wise which is preventing the roll out to T-Mobile in the area. Just a thought.
I kinda disagree on that. Despite Cincinnati bell using the same frequencies, they might be running a different freq channel. But at this rate who know, however this is getting ridiculous.
I was told by a T mobile manager at Kenwood Mall that it would be till 2011 if we got 3g. There is a greater possibility that we will NEVER be 3g. Interlopers on the freq and there might be a court case.
Central Tx is on the 3G map finally!!! Today was a good Day…. for T-mobile customers. Killeen-Waco Tx. Bout Damn time!!!!
uggh waco
My mom is in Killeen, Tx right now getting 3G. I am only 15 mins away in Temple, and not even a sign of EDGE!
Hell, all I want is Edge in my area. Pretty hard to justify a $25 data plan when I have two to three bars of GPRS.
Exactly. TMo should be ashamed forcing people to get $25/month data packages for those of us who barely have any coverage & when we do it’s usually GPRS or if we’re lucky EDGE. If they wanted to be fair they’d quit pushing the unlimited crap on people & give us lower cost metered options for those of us who use little data either by choice or because of their lacking data coverage. Not right to charge someone with GPRS coverage the same price as people who have 3G since they can’t possible transfer the same amount of data per month as each other. By charging per MB the cost should be more proportional to actual use.
I think a per megabyte charge would be much more fair given that some are on GPRS, some on Edge, some on regular 3G, and a select few on 7.2 MB. Personally, I think more people would buy smart phones if a per megabyte charge were a data option. A person using only a little data would get a nice and fair low rate. Plus, if a person wanted to use lots of data, they could pay more for that privilege, and the data charges would be much more fair.
@Mr. Stacy R. Par
Well with DSL/Cable internet service you pay a different rate per month depending on speed. Even though those are unlimited they know that each line can only transmit so much data over the course of a month with the fastest being able to do the most & slowest the least. So along the same lines the fairest way would be metered, with a fair per unit price of course. And I agree, metered would definitely bring more people in vs forcing an unlimited data package on people. How many customers are they chasing off because they don’t want to commit to $25+ per month on data? Forcing a data plan on all smartphones is definitely the wrong move & charging a different rate for smartphones vs regular phones is unfair. Unlimited should be unlimited otherwise they should change to per unit pricing.
Was in Cincinnati. No 3G. I guess Tmo doesn’t like that Cincy Chili.
ROFLMAO that actually sounds pretty good right about now.
wtf is up with that picture…?!?!
why is it that people still have the stereotype that Texas is all cowboys, injuns, & horses…???
reminds me of the time this chic from NY came to Texas for college. She said she expected to see everyone riding horses and wearing cowboy boots. At that exact moment I slapped that ho’& said, and i quote, ” Welcome to Texas Beeyitch”…
Already! Fuckin NY’er! Hate dem bitchez. Glad u checked one of em…..
I would be happy if I had regular 1G coverage at my house in Renton WA. What a joke!
On a side note, I’ve eaten at the Big Texan once… VERY good steak! Its a must stop!
MBX
Sigh still no 3g in Louisville
Damn, I feel sorry for ppl in waco tx. they clearly said waco-4q of 09 and we in Killeen got our 3g yesterday. Its werd cuz I neva saw a release date and we got our before waco. oh well to bad for y’all. R.I.P to my solders lost on my base on Ft. Hood…..
Bill: Here in 48381, two thirds of the tower downtown is EDGE, while the other sector is GPRS. My house is right on the border between sectors, so my phone would switch between EDGE and GPRS all the time, save for several months this year when they inexplicably disabled EDGE and left the tower GPRS-only! I had an opportunity to talk to T-Mobile’s national director of M2M (machine-to-machine) last year, and he told me that hammering the cell site with data would probably get someone at the Livonia switch to notice and re-enable EDGE. My record was 4GB of data in a month over GPRS, mostly streaming Canadian radio on an unlocked iPhone.
After months of hammering the site, someone finally re-enabled EDGE… on the same two sectors as before! [facepalm] If your phone supports 3G, it stops in Wixom, one town over. Trust me, I feel your pain. Well… I’ve felt your pain. I switched to Sprint a month ago and it’s like when I first went from dialup to a cable modem. EV-DO everywhere for the same price I was paying zee Germans, plus things like unlimited calling to any cell phone and unlimited N&W, which couldn’t be added to my Blackberry plan. And if I need to roam on Verizon, the phone can be forced onto their network.
The really sad thing was that roaming on regional carriers (like indigo Wireless or Centennial) between Midland and Traverse City was 100% EDGE, even all the way up M-115 where the cell sites are little boxes on telephone poles with a couple antennas pointing up and down the main road.
Albany, GA… What about Albany, New bloody York! It’s the capital of the Empire State and we still have only bloody EDGE… and where I live that is sketchy at best… Just because I was an early adopter of Android should I get shafted with a data plan cost that doesn’t provide said coverage in my area. crappy…
Well, I am in Albany, Ga right now to enjoy Thanksgiving with the family, and guess what? Nope. No EDGE.