T-Mobile came by the LUCI lab and Donald Bren Hall and gave a product roadmap presentation for the campus today.
We started with some research presentations:

1. André van der Hoek talked about using tablets in the classroom and meeting room for creative/design work
2. Chen Li talked about intelligent mobile search
3. Steve Voida talked about studying multi-tasking office work instrumented with sensors to understand how work is done throughout the week
4. Alfred Kobdsa talked about studies of usability of personal navigation devices
5. Karen Cheng talked about mobile technology for health with high vulnerability low resource populations.
6. Bill Maurer talked about mobile finance in the developing world

Then T-Mobile, via Kimberly Back, gave us a glimpse of what T-Mobile is up to and what is coming down their product pipeline:

1. They are currently owned by Deutsche Telekom
2. Currently T-Mobile has deployed HSPA+ (“21Mbps theoretical” 4G) which is 6-8 Mbps down, 2Mbps up.  Covers 200 million people.
3. In June SoCal is getting upgraded to HSPA+ (“42Mbps theoretical” 4G) 10-12 Mbps download (on the street, not theoretical), 2Mbps upload.
4. Those are just speeds from phone to the tower however…
5. Traditionally telecoms use T1 connections (x6) from tower out…
6. 90% of T-Mobiles have direct Ethernet out now.  T-Mobile is 12-18 months ahead of AT&T. This is why AT&T wants to buy them.  This is the source of the iPhone speed troubles everything after the tower…
7. T-Mobile has Wi-Fi based calling for voice (not just data) using standard protocols.  It creates a secure tunnel to T-Mobile data center over Wi-Fi where it is connected to normal phone network.  This works internationally free of charge.
8. U.S. Market share in 2010: 26% Android, 28% Apple, 25% RIM, 20% other. Android is growing much faster in new purchases, however.
9. Nokia Astound is coming out with “one of the bigger banks in America” with Near-Field Communications later in the year
10. 3 new Blackberries coming out, one with Near-Field communications in July.
11. New 4G Mobile Hotspot came out last week that connects to the HSPA+ 21 network.
12. Samsung Galaxy was the first tablet device that came out from T-Mobile with Android, but runs Android 2.2 and is falling behind.
13. Dell Streak is also an existing device running Android 2.2 and is upgradeable to Android Honeycomb because it has a dual-core processor.
14. A nice slide on tablet comparisons that they are going to forward to us.
15. They have a tablet that records in 3-D !.  Not even sure what to make of that.
16. If T-Mobile doesn’t carry it and it takes a SIM card, they can get it through Business Partner Sales.