Not a shocker here: T-Mobile USA, which has said very little in the past about its 3G plans but won big in the recent advanced wireless services auction, will hold a conference call tomorrow and is expected to announce plans to rollout UMTS in the 1700 to 2100 MHz spectrum that it won at auction. T-Mobile spent about $4.2 billion in the auction for more than 100 licenses. Analysts have always declared T-Mobile to be at a disadvantage because of its lack of spectrum in the past and its slowness toward 3G. But it may end up one of the big winners. 3G take-up isn't as big as folks expected, and T-Mobile may be able to take advantage of some nice economies of scale stemming from an acceleration of global deployments of UMTS. Pali Research analyst Walter Piecyk notes: "While Sprint Nextel seems intent on being the first to announce technology initiatives, the reality is that the broadband wireless data market has not yet evolved to a point where T-Mobile's late announcement and deployment will impact its ability to compete for these services."
And UMTS provides more than just high-speed data. It offers the capacity that T-Mobile needs to continue its aggressive push on the cheap voice front, especially against CDMA2000 operator Leap Wireless.
For more about T-Mobile USA's UMTS announcement tomorrow:
- check out this article from Mobile Guerrilla