T-Mobile has been busy. The struggling carrier has launched a brand new phone, the myTouch 4G, and a new advertising campaign to go with it. The carrier is claiming to have “America’s largest 4G network,” a hotly disputed fact both geographically and technologically.
T-Mobile myTouch 4G
The myTouch 4G is now available on T-Mobile’s website. The phone comes in four colors and retails for $200 with a two-year contract, with an additional $50 mail-in rebate. It will run you $450 without a contract. The myTouch has a 3.8 inch touchscreen, 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, 5 megapixel camera, and 8 GB memory card. The device also has a front-facing camera and is capable of video chat over Wi-Fi or T-Mobile’s HSPA+ (what it’s calling “4G”) network. T-Mobile also recently introduced tiered data plans, an option for myTouch 4G buyers.
America’s largest 4G Network
Claiming to have a 4G network doesn’t seem to be helping Sprint, but T-Mobile is going to take a stab at it. The struggling carrier is launching a new commercial campaign claiming that it has more 4G than any other carrier. It’s copying the old Mac vs PC ads that Apple used to run, showing T-Mobile as an attractive young Zeta-like woman and the iPhone as a guy dragged down by AT&T’s slow network. Unfortunately, many have argued that T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network is not technically 4G, reports Fierce Wireless. However, it remains unclear what exactly 4G is and who has it. The ITU announced that only LTE-Advanced and WiMax 2 networks qualify as 4G, leaving all carriers 4G-less. Still, marketing may win the day. If other carriers point out that T-Mobile isn’t using true 4G, it can always come back and tell the world that no carrier has true 4G.
T-Mobile’s new CTO Neville Ray defended the carrier’s use of the 4G term. “4G is about performance and today T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network is delivering 4G speeds that match and often beat WiMAX and are readily comparable to what early LTE will deliver. Our 4G network is capable of theoretical speeds up to 21Mbps and we have seen average download speeds approaching 5 Mbps on our myTouch 4G phone in some cities with peak speeds of nearly 12 Mbps. The footprint of our 4G service is not something that competitors are going to match anytime soon.”
4G or not, T-Mobile plans to cover 200 million people wit hits HSPA+ network by year-end.
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