T-Mobile USA has launched its 3G wireless network in New York City today. Other major markets will get 3G coverage later in the year. The service is currently restricted to four models, Nokia’s 3555 and 6263, and Samsung’s t819 and t639. These phones allow Web browsing and downloading at speeds twice that of non-3G T-Mobile phones. Later this year T-Mobile will launch handsets that are four times as fast as non-3G models. The future releases will utilize High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), which allows speeds of around 600 kilobits per second.

BlackBerry smart phones with HSDPA won’t be available until next year, said Neville Ray, senior vice president of engineering and operations at T-Mobile USA.

T-Mobile’s network isn’t compatible with other HSDPA phones because T-Mobile’s spectrum in the United States differs from phones sold by AT&T and overseas manufactures. T-Mobile bought its licenses in a 2006 government auction but has had to wait before getting the 3G network up and running. Much of the spectrum it bought was being used by defense and law enforcement and it has taken time for these entities to give-up the airwaves.

“It’s been a tough road, but they’ve been very cooperative in recent months,” said Ray. The speed of the rollout of 3G to other cities is now more dependent on how fast the company can get new equipment up and running, he added.

T-Mobile and Nokia are forming a partnership in Europe to provide new Internet services and social communities to handsets throughout Europe. All of their European customers will have access to T-Mobile’s web’n’walk and Nokia’s Ovi Internet services.

Mobile social networks will be upgraded by offering T-Mobile’s MyFaves application. The partnership will also create “widget cooperation” between the mini-programs offered by both companies.

Nokia, which is the world’s largest handset manufacturer, will customize its devices for T-Mobile services. T-Mobile, a mobile phone telecommunications provider, will give its customers enhanced access to Nokia services.

There are no plans as of now to move the partnership out of Europe. Deutsche Telekom, which owns T-Mobile, said that it considers the U.S. market as separate from the European market.

Avi Greengart, an industry researcher with the firm Current Analysis, sees Nokia as the biggest winner in its partnership with T-Mobile. T-Mobile is another European carrier that has signed up to offer Nokia’s Ovi services.

Ovi isn’t offered in the United States. IDC’s Chris Hazelton thinks that Nokia is currently trying to win more market share in the United States. To breakout in the U.S. market, Nokia will need to support services offered by carriers inside the United States. But services like Ovi are seen by Hazelton as part of Nokia’s long-term strategy for services outside the United States.

T-Mobile USA reported good numbers for the fourth-quarter of 2007. The company added 951,000 new customers and generated $4.4 billion in revenue. These numbers are up from 2006’s fourth-quarter, when T-Mobil USA added 901,000 customers and had $3.81 billion in revenue. By the end of 2007, T-Mobile was the fourth largest cell phone service provider in the United States with 28.7 million customers.

“In 2007, we increased growth to more than 3.6 million net new customers,” said Robert Dotson, T-Mobile USA’s CEO and president, in a statement. “MyFaves was a major contributor with 5 million customers at year end using the service.”

T-Mobile has introduced some innovative features and services, including Talk Forever Home Phone, which is being tested in Dallas and Seattle. It has also launched HotSpot@Home, a service that allows users to make unlimited nationwide Wi-Fi calls in their homes.

The mobile phone company T-Mobile will experiment with providing landline services to customers. Starting today, it will offer wired service for $10 a month to its wireless subscribers in the Seattle and Dallas-Fort Worth areas.

Unlimited local and long distance calls can be made with the service which is called, Talk Forever Home Phone. The service will be carried on customer’s high-speed Internet connection, in much the same way voice-over-Internet providers like Vontage Holdings sell phone service.

Customers who sign-up will have to buy a T-Mobile Internet router for $50. The router has two standard phone jacks where corded or cordless phones can be plugged in. An existing home number can be transferred to the new service. Subscribers will also need to be signed up for a wireless plan costing at least $39.99 a month.

Last year, T-Mobile launched the Hotspot AtHome program. This program, which is similar to the Talk Forever Home Phone, places calls over the Internet using special Wi-Fi-equipped phones. HotSpot also costs $10 a month for unlimited calls.

T-Mobile’s new plan is set up to ease the transition from traditional landline to cell phone communication. Both plans allow people to keep their familiar home phones as well as their home number.

T-Mobile isn’t saying how many people have subscribed to HotSpot AtHome, but David Beigie, T-Mobile’s vice president of marketing said it has, “blown away internal estimates.”

MobileCrunch reported yesterday that Verizon’s new unlimited calling plan could start a price war in the U.S. mobile market. Hours after the announcement by Verizon Wireless, both AT&T and T-Mobile returned fire with unlimited calling plans of their own. Consumers should be happy but stock holders of the telecommunications companies may become a little gun shy.

Verizon’s $99.99 a month unlimited calling plan (which covers all of the United States not just selected areas) was only five hours old when AT&T announced its own unlimited plan. Three hours after AT&T’s announcement, T-Mobile joined the conflict, saying it would introduce a $99.99 plan today. Unlike the Verizon and AT&T plans, T-Mobile’s includes unlimited text and picture messaging, which costs $14.99 per month when added to other T-Mobile plans.

“This is a highly competitive market and we’re committed to moving fast to meet customer needs,” said Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T Mobility.

The number three provider in the United States, Sprint Nextel, currently has an unlimited calling plan of $119.99 a month, but it is limited to residents of Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Tampa and parts of Northern California and Western Nevada. Analysts expect Sprint to announce its own unlimited plan that covers the entire nation.

It is speculated that Sprint’s flat-rate calling plan could undercut the competition by as much as 40%, a move that would intensify the mobile war. Recently, Sprint has seen a defection of customers that has hurt the bottom line. Selling unlimited plans for as little as $60 could bring new recruits back to Sprint.

“Our bigger concern rests with Sprint’s plans and the potential for future additional competitive responses,” Robert W. Baird analyst Will Power wrote in a research note.

Share prices for all the combatants have been on the decline since Verizon fired the first salvo in the mobile pricing war. If Sprint tries to undercut the competition with $80 or $60 plans, the competition will be forced to respond with either lower prices or more services with their pricing packages. This will cut into profits, at least for awhile.

“Our bigger concern rests with Sprint’s plans and the potential for future additional competitive responses,” Robert W. Baird analyst Will Power wrote in a research note.

T-Mobile announced that it will be dropping Google and picking up Yahoo as its preferred mobile search provider in Europe. This is a minor victory for Yahoo, which is in direct competition with Google and Microsoft to put its search engine on mobile phones that can access the Internet. When T-Mobile partnered with Google, it was heralded as one of the first partnerships between a mobile operator and a search provider.

“Well done Yahoo for knocking Google off the Web n Walk home page,” wrote John Delaney, an analyst for Ovum, commenting on the announcement. Web n Walk is T-Mobile’s mobile Internet offering.

Starting this March, T-Mobile customers in 11 European countries will see Yahoo’s mobile oneSearch become the default on their phones. OneSearch is crafted to make it easy for mobile users to get relevant search results and navigate through different categories within search results. Other Yahoo services are also planned, including Flickr, Messenger, Mail, Weather and Finance. Yahoo has 29 mobile operators as oneSearch customers.

The market for mobile branded search services is still young, with no clear leaders. Search providers like Yahoo and Google are betting that there will be strong growth in mobile Internet usage and are willing to spend money trying to become the number one provider.

T-Mobile USA added 951,000 subscriptions between October and December of 2007. This gives the country’s fourth largest mobile phone company a subscription customer base of 28.7 million. T-Mobile’s sales were up 14.6% over 2006 numbers.

Shareholders of Deutsche Telekom AG, the T-Mobile parent company, were asking for the sale of T-Mobile USA last year. Chief Executive Rene Obermann fended off those demands last June, saying that T-Mobile USA can add 5 million new subscribers by the end of 2007. T-Mobile USA fell short of that goal and only sold 3.6 million subscriptions in all of 2007.

T-Mobile USA’s growth did outdo the 9% growth that Deutsche Telekom posted in the European market. Since November, T-Mobile’s German unit sold 70,000 iPhones. T-Mobile is the exclusive iPhone provider in Germany. Worldwide, Deutsche Telekom has 119.6 million subscribers.

The Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) launched a $175,000 campaign today to remind people to recycle their old handsets. The initiative, entitled “Recycle Your Cellphone. It’s an Easy Call.”, will relay on public service announcements that target 18-to-34-year-olds, the population that trade up to new cellphones the most often. The announcements will explain why recycling old handsets is good for the environment. The E.P.A. will also release a pod cast in which experts explain the whys and hows of mobile phone recycling.

The E.P.A estimates that 150 million cellphones a year are taken out of service. The United States alone has over 240 million wireless subscriptions. While an individual phone doesn’t have much environmental impact, taken all together, disposal could create problems in the future. Handheld devices contain metals, plastics and chemicals that could become hazardous if they end up in a landfill and leach into the ground. Part of the program includes donating old mobile phones to charities and poor people for reuse.

“There are significant environmental and energy benefits to getting these phones back into the product stream,” the director of the agency’s office of solid waste, Matt Hale, said.

“Our key role is to get the message out, that recycling cellphones is easy and convenient,” said Mr. Hale, who estimates that 20 percent of unwanted cellphones are recycled or reused each year.

Eleven companies — AT&T, Best Buy, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, Office Depot, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Sprint, Staples and T-Mobile — are partners in the campaign. Each has promised to collect phones and hold recycling events.

“Each partner will still have its own program,” Mr. Buckley said, “but E.P.A. is providing a standardized message to consumers.”

The E.P.A. will create a list of cellphone drop-off centers on various Web sites, including epa.gov. Some companies have plans to offer credit and other financial incentives for recycling mobile phones.

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T-Mobile’s HotSpot Wi-Fi service is now available at five Amtrak stations in the Northeast Corridor. Sitting in a train station may not be as posh a visiting a coffee house or book store but at least now commuters can enjoy the Internet while waiting for a connecting ride. The five stations include Washington Union Station, Baltimore Penn Station, Wilmington Station, Philadelphia 30th Street Station and New York Penn Station. A variety of Wi-Fi service plans are available from one day passes going up to unlimited annual passes. Just don’t miss the connecting train while you spend quality time with your computer.

“Reliable and secure wireless Internet access is one of the amenities most frequently requested by our customers,” said Matt Hardison, chief, Sales Distribution and Customer Service at Amtrak. “By partnering with T-Mobile to provide Wi-Fi at Amtrak stations, we’re ensuring that business and leisure travelers alike can connect to the Internet with enhanced security and make better use of their time in our stations along the Northeast Corridor.”

“The continued success of T-Mobile HotSpot service can be attributed to being in the places where people want to connect with family, friends and associates; and also ensuring the service is reliable and of high quality,” said Joe Sims, vice president and general manager, Broadband Products and Services, T-Mobile USA. “We’re excited about our partnership with Amtrak to provide customers in the Northeast with another convenient and effective way to stay connected.”

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T-Mobile has tapped into Danger’s programming geniuses to provide an enhanced MySpace experience for the T-Mobile application Sidekick. Now, instead of using a Web browser to visit MySpace, customers can download the new MySpace application to enjoy a unique MySpace experience on Sidekick. This is being touted as the most powerful mobile MySpace service available. Users have complete real-time access to MySpace on their hand sets.

“Sidekick users are often the hub of their circle of friends, and MySpace is the No. 1 Web site our users visit on their device,” said Jeff Hopper, vice president of marketing at T-Mobile USA. “We’ve worked closely with MySpace and Danger to create a powerful MySpace Mobile experience that is uniquely tailored for the T-Mobile Sidekick. We think MySpace and Sidekick users are going to love having complete control over their MySpace universe right from the palm of their hand.”

Sidekick has been carefully crafted so that users can easily navigate all aspects of the MySpace Mobile content. The design is optimized to deliver data to each user easily, while preserving the features that MySpace visitors love on their PCs.

“Innovating on our mobile platform is one of the most important initiatives for us,” said Amit Kapur, vice president of business development for MySpace. “Given the high degree of MySpace and Sidekick usage overlap, we know our users will be thrilled to have this optimized experience.”

The relationship between T-Mobile and MySpace is more evidence to show that mobile devices are being mainstreamed into market strategies for businesses that started as PC based. The increased computing power of mobile phones creates new opportunities that successful companies are going to continue to tap into.

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