The 3G upgrade for T-Mo in the US is completely moot at this point. The very best they can hope to accomplish is to bring themselves somewhere near parity with the rest of the US carriers, who have had 3G for years, and are already rolling out _4G_ in some places.
If they have any prayer of surviving here, they're going to need to do something drastic. As I see it, they can do one of two things.
1) Scrap the 3G rollout and start planning for 4G. If they can get a decent 4G network online relatively soon, they might have an opportunity to win back some business customers.
2) Do exactly what the article says. Give up the ghost about being competitive in the business market, cobble up one of the low-cost carriers, and go for the prepaid market.
Frankly, I don't see them being very successful with #1. Even if they had the network, they have serious image problems here in the States. Going back to when they were VoiceStream and before, the T-Mobile brand has always had an image of a low-cost, second-tier carrier. They've never been good at marketing to business users. That's an image they aren't going to change easily.
I'm not surprised that mobiles are excluded. Calling a mobile in Mexico is very expensive. Even if you're calling a local mobile from a local landline, it's still a toll call, and about 2 or 3 pesos a minute
Even in Mexico, virtually the only time it's free/cheap to call a mobile is if you're calling someone on your own carrier. For instance, when I was living there this summer, it was about $3.50MXN/minute (about $0.25USD/min to call from my Movistar phone to someone on Telcel.
I've really been hoping Palm would get this thing together soon. I've been hanging on to a (serviceable, but dated) Treo 700p that I've had the itch to replace for about 6 months now. I'm a decent CDMA android-powered phone away from jumping ship at this point.
Let the hive mind of Engadget get that for you.
"I'm in the market for a new phone and money isn't a limitation. I'm also not partial to any particular US carrier, but here are some of the features I'd like to have: WiFi, GPS, good coverage in lots of places, push Gmail (a must!), physical keyboard (a must!), a touchscreen, decent battery life and a relatively slim body. And please, nothing that has a fruit logo on it. No offense to the fruit fans, though. Thanks!"
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If they have any prayer of surviving here, they're going to need to do something drastic. As I see it, they can do one of two things.
1) Scrap the 3G rollout and start planning for 4G. If they can get a decent 4G network online relatively soon, they might have an opportunity to win back some business customers.
2) Do exactly what the article says. Give up the ghost about being competitive in the business market, cobble up one of the low-cost carriers, and go for the prepaid market.
Frankly, I don't see them being very successful with #1. Even if they had the network, they have serious image problems here in the States. Going back to when they were VoiceStream and before, the T-Mobile brand has always had an image of a low-cost, second-tier carrier. They've never been good at marketing to business users. That's an image they aren't going to change easily.