T-Mobile USA told those at the Mobilize conference yesterday that the carrier plans to ramp up its 3G speeds significantly in the next year. Although it began its 3G deployment much later than its GSM rival AT&T, T-Mobile's chief technical officer Cole Brodman expects to have its 7.2Mbps HSPA service online by the end of 2009. He now additionally expects the firm to introduce HSPA+ service at 21Mbps at some point in 2010.
The approach potentially gives T-Mobile a temporary edge over AT&T. While HSPA+ was once in the latter's roadmap, the company now says it will likely skip the format and move directly from 7.2Mbps 3G to its first 4G service when that becomes commercially available in 2011. T-Mobile also plans to move to 4G in a relatively close timeframe.
In addition to the network changes, Brodman updated the audience on the performance of Android and noted that there are now almost 10,000 apps available through Android Market in the less than a year the OS and online store have been available. Users on at least T-Mobile's network have also typically downloaded 40 apps, or about eight times more than Blackberry owners that often have few or no apps. By comparison, the iPhone's App Store has over 75,000 programs, though there aren't recent estimates for the number of apps downloaded per person.
The catalog and the adoption rate are both expected to go up in the near future following Google's redesign of Android Market to better advertise apps, especially paid titles, as well as the adoption of more non-HTC Android phones like the Motorola Cliq.
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