We’re all getting used to HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) for fast downloads on mobile broadband and our mobile phones, but T-Mobile has today switched on it’s HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) facility, which does the same thing for uploads.  Limited to a maximum of “only” 1.4mbps, it’s faster than most broadband download speeds! Not all kit supports HSUPA today, and it’s not clear how widespread T-Mobile’s roll out is today, but it’s a start.  They’ve also upgraded their HSDPA to a maximum of 7.2mbps, but again, without coverage information, this may not benefit many people either.  The only good thing is that T-Mobile have at least stated that the 7.2mbps network is likely to result in real world speeds of 4.5mbps, in line with other providers.

T-Mobile have announced price reductions in their SMS and data costs whilst roaming. SMSes will now cost 25p (instead of 40p), and data will now “only” cost £1.50 per MB (down from £7.50 per MB). Whilst we support these price reductions, we don’t think they go far enough to encourage people to use these services completely (when 3 will give you Mobile Broadband in the UK for £10 for 1GB, it puts into question these data roaming charges). For calls, we recommend you look at MaxRoam, but until they support data, you may still be better just leaving the phone switched off.

These price changes should take effect from next month, according to SMS Text News, but we would recommend you check with T-Mobile if you are going to rely upon the price to use the service abroad.

You can’t make this up; T-Mobile is, according to an article in The Register, doubling the cost of 08xx calls because OfCom told them to! OfCom told the operator to ensure that they were charging 0870, 0871, 0844 and 0845 calls as “normal” national calls. As T-Mobile mainly bundles lots of minutes with each contract, it appears to have set the “normal” national rate to be their out of bundle rate for a landline call. However, they are not going to include these calls in their bundled minutes, so as a result, the actual cost of calling these numbers will now increase. T-Mobile have said “To make things clearer for our customers, we have aligned our 08 number charges with local and national calls to follow the latest Ofcom guidelines. These calls aren’t included as part of your allowance in any of our price plans.”

Flext customers will go from 10ppm to 20ppm, Just SIM or Solo customers will go from 10ppm to 30ppm, and Freetime customers will now pay 40pp (peak). These changes will take effect on 28th July.

With those sorts of rates, we suspect even more mobile users will be heading to saynoto0870.com (which actually covers most of the 08x ranges) to find alternative national landline numbers, instead of calling 08xx numbers, and then the call will come out of your allowance.

We’ll have to see how the other operators react, but here’s a thought to them: why not include them in the minutes, just like you used to 5 years ago, and whilst you’re there, how about making freephone calls (0800, 0808) calls actually free as well…?

We first covered the LG Secret after it’s launch, and have been using one ever since. However, if you want your own Secret, it’s now available;

• on Vodafone, and if you spend more than £35 per month (for 18 months; or £40 per month for a 12 month contract), you should find the phone is free too.
• on O2, spending £35 per month for 18 months, £30 for 24 months, or £40 for 12 months will get the phone for free.
• on Orange, although you won’t get the phone for free on any tariff.

We’ve been generally impressed with the phone, although it’s not in the same league as an N95 or an iPhone. We understand it should be available on 3 and T-Mobile soon, although neither are listing the phone on their websites today.

Although nothing is firm, 3 mentioned today at a briefing, that they are looking at providing a home router with a 3G modem built in, to allow people to connect their whole network via 3G, instead of just a single laptop or desktop via a USB dongle. 3 also said they will expect sales of dongles to drop as more laptops come with HSDPA built in over the next few months. Of course, they’ll still make their money from the contract, and won’t need to provide hardware, so it will be interesting to see whether they offer a SIM-only data deal, and what pricing they offer.

Finally, they also talked about speed of 3G connections, and whether companies are over-selling their services. Mainly aimed at Vodafone, 3 are claiming customers should be more worried about signal strength and the impact of other traffic, and not just the headline connection rate. To help counter this, 3 are planning to increase the number of mast sites from 7,500 to 9,000 by 2009 as part of their mast sharing deal with T-Mobile. This will also help increase population coverage from 90% to 98%, which will also help.

T-Mobile now offers it’s USB Modem on PAYG for £99.99 with a £4 per day offering. It’s advertised as unlimited, but it’s Web’n'Walk Plus, which doesn’t offer all services (VOIP is not allowed on this tariff, for example), and compared to 3’s £10 for the whole month doesn’t sound such good value if you would use it more than twice a month. Also, we could not find out whether T-Mobile actually meant unlimited, or had a fair usage policy on this service.

So, O2, T-Mobile, 3, and Vodafone all openly promote good data deals (although some of them could do with keeping their web sites up to dates with their latest deals and T&Cs), Orange stand out as only promoting their pay monthly service, and not a PAYG service.

T-Mobile (through T-Mobile Venture Fund) has invested an undisclosed sum into Ubiquisys, a femtocell manufacturer. A femtocell is a home base station for your mobile phone, ensuring you get 3G data and good signal strength, which usually utilises the broadband connection to route the mobile phone data and calls back to your network operator. This bodes well for the future, and we should expect to see femtocells becoming a lot more common over the next couple of years.

Story courtesy of SMS Text News.

Although only a few details are currently available, Yahoo have announced they have signed a deal with T-Mobile to provide adverts to users of T-Mobile’s Web’n'Walk Internet services. The press release says that they “will combine their expertise in the industry and knowledge of consumer habits, to enable advertisers to offer consumers targeted graphical ads”. Ads should start appearing in the first half of 2008 (ie by June).

There is no information as to whether this will reduce the price to consumers, whether or not customers will be able to turn these adverts on or off, or even exactly how these adverts will be delivered, and the impact to the customer’s browsing experience. We’ve already seen Nokia trialling adverts directly on their devices, but we await this implementation to see whether or not it will drive customers
towards or away from T-Mobile.

Although not yet confirmed on the T-Mobile website, we believe T-Mobile is going to offer it’s mobile customers free WiFi access, if they are on the Web’n'Walk Plus or Web’n'Walk Max tariffs (ie not the standard Web’n'Walk tariff). This will give these users access to T-Mobile’s 1,200 HotSpots.  More information once available.

T-Mobile and 3 announced earlier this week a new joint venture between the two companies. The deal involves the sharing of 3G masts, resulting in what should become the best 3G network coverage of the UK next year. This should allow both companies to have near complete population coverage by the end of 2008, with “significant fill in and improvement to dense urban in-building coverage” in 2009. An environmental side benefit of the sharing of the wireless network will be a reduction of over 5000 masts.

Purchasing a SIM free (ie not locked to a particular mobile phone network operator) just got a little harder today. T-Mobile’s appeal against an earlier German ruling (that forced it to put unlocked iPhones on sale for 999 Euros) has been successful, and hence T-Mobile are no longer selling unlocked iPhones. This leaves Orange in France the only people offering SIM free iPhones.

E-Ten has launched their keyboard version of the X800, the M800. The spec includes 3.5G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, two cameras (2 megapixel and VGA quality), FM radio, a VGA (480 x 640) 2.8″ touch screen, and Windows Mobile 6 Professional. The main feature “issue” with the phone is it only has 64Mb of RAM. Of course, others, such as HTC’s Tilt may have more memory, but not the VGA screen.

The main downside, however, is that there is no word as to whether E-Ten has finally solved the problem that prevents their phones from connecting to T-Mobile UK’s GPRS network, which has limited the success of many of their recent phones due to T-Mobile’s good data deals.

If these problems are now solved, please let us know.

Not just have 3 matched T-Mobile’s Flext tariffs, but they’ve done some other interesting things. Take the N95, for example - even if you select the cheapest (£15 per month) tariff, the N95 remains free! One small point, you can only get the N95 with 120 video calling minutes, which costs £12 per month, so in essence there is an element of a payment for having a top spec phone. Even adding X-Series Silver to this results in a combined monthly cost of £32 per month, no one-off cost for the N95, and you are getting 300 minutes or texts, 120 video calling minutes, and 1Gb of data, plus a load of Skype minutes, MSN messages (both on top of the 1Gb of data). The only missing information on the 3 website is either those 120 video minutes are cross network… They are 3 to 3 only (as clearly stated in the full 3 price guide, which is another good point about 3 - try finding a full price guide for every dialling code on the other UK mobile providers’ websites…)

Compare that to T-Mobile’s cheapest tariff: On the cheapest Web’n'Walk (which doesn’t allow instant messaging), the monthly cost is £22.50, but the phone costs £220. Over the 18 months of the contract that’s £625 compared to £576 on 3.

Leave the contract running for 2 years though, and T-Mobile is £760 compared to £768, so there’s some logic in changing plan / tariff / company before 2 years is up to keep ahead financially (plus, you’ll be fed up with the limited battery life of the N95 well before then). Of course, if you want IMs, then you need to pay a higher monthly charge to T-Mobile (although it does raise the monthly data limit too), which changes the figures.

Two final points - that £22.50 from T-Mobile gets you 170 minutes or 340 texts, so if you use the phone more than you text, 3 are giving you nearly twice the number of minutes, a better data plan, and no upfront cost. Secondly, 3 will also throw in an additional 300 3 to 3 minutes per month (my partner isn’t on 3, so this is less useful to me, hence I’ve not majored on it, but it could easily swing it for others).

Coo.