Hasta La Gadget!

Today at T-Mobile’s UNcarrier event in New York City, the company officially launched its 4G LTE network in seven markets around the US. These cities include Baltimore, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Jose, and Washington DC. T-Mobile expects its 4G LTE network to reach 100 million Americans by mid-2013, and 200 million people by the end of 2013.

We’ve already seen what LTE devices will be available on T-Mobile, but those devices are pretty much useless without the LTE network to go along with it. Of course, only seven markets in the US is nothing close to what Verizon and AT&T currently have, but if T-Mobile’s goal of 200 million people by the end of the year is met, the competition between the three of these carriers could heat up quick.

Earlier, it was said that T-Mobile’s LTE was detected in eight cities before the launch, including Denver, New Orleans, San Diego, New York, and Seattle, for which these cities weren’t officially announced by T-Mobile today. These cities may be markets that will see the flip being switched shortly, but T-Mobile didn’t include these cities in their announcement during today’s event.

However, before the official launch of the LTE, many T-Mobile users reported being able to access LTE in several cities such as Phoenix, Houston, and San Jose, which wasn’t all too surprising, considering that T-Mobile most likely wanted these areas live with LTE as the carrier made the announcement.

T-Mobile LTE live in seven markets starting today is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

T-Mobile has started to roll out 4G services in the Phoenix and San Jose ahead of a press gathering today, according to our tipsters. Screen grabs show the service alive and kicking out speeds in the 20-30Mbps range, though we’ve yet to verify it for ourselves. The company already outed its “UnCarrier” plans on its site earlier featuring non-subsidized smartphones — including LTE models — along with unlimited voice, text and basic data plans. We should be able to color in the rest of the details later this morning.

[Thanks Nick, Dustin]

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, T-Mobile

Comments

Google announced the Chromebook Pixel late last month, and said that it will begin shipping sometime next month, but no specific release date was disclosed. However, the LTE model of the new laptop looks to have a solid ship date of April 8, according to the product listing on the Google Play store. The entry level model still has yet to display a ship date, however.

The LTE version costs $1,449, which is $150 more than the entry level variant at $1,299. Then again, it comes with twice the storage capacity, but that still only makes it a device with 64GB of storage. Then again, we could see some users upgrading to the 64GB model for the storage alone, with LTE being a nice perk that comes with the package.

Obviously, though, you’ll have to pay a monthly fee through Verizon if you want to use more than 100MB per month. According to GigaOM, $9.99 will get you an unlimited day pass. $20 per month will land you 1GB of data, $35 for 3GB, and $50 for 5GB. The free 100MB-per-month deal only lasts two years, so all LTE Pixel users will end up paying a monthly fee sooner or later.

Verizon customers can also add their new Chromebook Pixel to their existing Share Everything plan for only $10 per month. This allows Verizon customers to not have to pay more for data than what they’re already paying for. If you’re not familiar with the Pixel, it’s Google’s newest product and it sports a super high resolution 2560×1700 display, as well as an Intel Core i5 dual-core 1.8GHz processor and 4GB of RAM.

[via GigaOM]

Google Chromebook Pixel LTE model shipping April 8 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It was rumored a few days ago that T-Mobile would finally be launching its LTE network in the US this month. If that’s the case, then they’re running out of days, but the company announced that they’ll be hosting an event on March 26 where they could officially launch the new service. In the meantime, eight cities have been detected of running T-Mobile’s LTE.

OpenSignal, a crowd-sourced Android app for identifying wireless coverage, is reporting that eight cities in the US are equipped with T-Mobile’s LTE network: Denver, Las Vegas, Kansas City, New Orleans, New York, San Diego, San Jose, and Seattle, as well as a few spots in Oakland near San Francisco. Furthermore, OpenSignal suggests that T-Mobile will be offering LTE versions of the Samsung Galaxy S III and GALAXY S 4 at some point.

From the looks of it, T-Mobile isn’t hitting all the big cities at first, but they are tackling a few large markets, including New York. Usually when carriers first roll out their LTE network, they test it out on smaller markets before rolling it out to larger cities, but it seems T-Mobile is going all-in the first time around.

However, speed tests seem pretty comparable to what we’re used to. OpenSignal reports averaging around 25 Mbps download speeds and 8 Mbps upload speed, with a 40ms ping on average. T-Mobile would be the last major carrier to launch LTE in the US, but it said that they would be covering 100 million people by the middle of this year, and 200 million by the end of 2013, which seems like an ambitious goal.

[via PC Mag]

T-Mobile LTE detected in 8 cities ahead of launch is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’re not surprised to learn that Cumbria is a hotbed of people working from home, as we’d do the same if we had the Lake District to wander around during our lunch hour. The downside of living in an area of outstanding natural beauty, of course, is that there isn’t even any landline broadband to use — but EE has despatched Kevin Bacon to remedy that with some 4G infrastructure. Residents of the Northern Fells will get mobile broadband offerings from £15.99 a month, and the company will use it as a gauge to see if it should provide services for other underserved rural communities. It seems that EE’s now the network for hill walkers as well as technofreaks.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Comments