The G1’s Achilles Heel: T-Mobile’s Network

DSL Reports on the G1:

T-Mobile insists that they’ll have HSDPA up and running in 21 markets by mid-october when the phone officially launches — and 27 markets by year’s end. AT&T got a pretty sound beating for releasing the iPhone 3G with more than 200 HSDPA-enabled markets

And, worse, “unlimited data usage” means “limited to 1 GB”. From T-Mobile’s fine print:

If your total data usage in any billing cycle is more than 1 GB, your data throughput for the remainder of that cycle may be reduced to 50 kbps or less.

I just checked, and for my last AT&T billing cycle, I used 360 MB of data on my iPhone 3G. That cycle includes five days at the Jersey shore and three days in Chicago for C4, both of which trips I used the data network for as long as the battery would allow. Other than that, though I spent the rest of the month at home, where I use the AT&T data network just a few times a day. I can see how someone who uses the cell network for data every day would go over 1 GB a month easily.

★ Tuesday, 23 September 2008