I am really hoping that T-Mobile picks up this phone: I've been asking for Nokia N-Series phones for over a year now.
I own an N85 -- I am forced to use 2G on it because T-Mobile USA won't open its network to 2100Mhz-only customers. It is open in Europe, so this is a local decision that's hurting T-Mobile's smartphone market. When I spoke to Jonathan Lynch, an executive at Corporate, he told me that the network was not prepared to handle too many smartphone customers, and that T-Mobile "wanted to stabilize the network" before opening its 2100Mhz frequency -- all of T-Mobile's phone operate on a franken-frequency of mixed 1700/2100 signals. He told me to contact him six months after our conversation to discuss T-Mobile's progress on both the network and the array of phones they offer.
It's been over six months. I held off on contacting him because when I saw the Nokia N900 was coming out for T-Mobile's frequencies, I was hoping the company would pick it up, thus answering my call for a N-Series phone I could use with T-Mobile that I could take with me to other countries. It's a great phone, so I was sure T-Mobile would pick it up.
The problem is: I think T-Mobile USA is run by people who are more concerned about cornering the low-end phone market than they are offering a full range of services. The executives I have talked to don't seem to want to be informed. Mr. Lynch had the audacity to tell me that he "questioned the quality of Nokia phones for T-Mobile's network," where I had to politely but forcefully respond to him that T-Mobile Europe offers them frequently, and that the ones I have used are of extremely good quality, certainly superior to T-Mobile's flop the Sony-Ericsson TM506 (the phone he used.) I got the impression from talking to Mr. Lynch that he knew precious little about cellphones outside of what T-Mobile had to offer. ("Phones can read barcodes, huh," he said during a conversation where I touted the N85's features. "Well, how many people actually use an FM transmitter?") I talked to a friend who works for T-Mobile in Boston, and he told me outright that corporate is so afraid of losing low-end phone customers that they were reluctant to expand its smartphone collection. T-Mobile USA seems to think Americans are too stupid to want phones with high-end features, and why create expensive contracts when folks are too dumb to take advantage of them?
I think T-Mobile needs to look at AT&T's business plan and wonder aloud at their own strategies.
I want to point out that high-level tech support at T-Mobile USA is the diametric opposite of corporate. They have proven on a regular basis to be very knowledgeable, and are at a loss as to how to move T-Mobile USA corporate to listen to their techs and their customers on the support of smartphones. I had one tech openly lament at me about this issue when I asked for progress on opening T-Mobile's 3G network. "T-Mobile tech, especially the old Voicestream guys, managed to figure out how best to use iPhones on 2G, and we welcomed the arrival of those customers. We've got our hands tied on 3G, however, and we know we are losing customers."
I'm going to say publicly that if T-Mobile continues to depend on HTC for its smartphone products and fails to either a) open the 3G frequency or b) offer better phones, low-end customers are all they are going to have.
That's not enough to run a company.
until now. Obviously I'm not the only one, judging form the responses on this thread, and appararntly a previous one.
