Softest of soft launches for T-Mobile 3G

[Ben]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21463

Get a Nokia 6330 for nothing


By Tony Dennis: Saturday 26 February 2005, 23:49

YOU CAN BUY a 3G mobile handset from T-Mobile in the UK right now, but you can’t have 3G’s video calling or high data speeds yet. How soft a soft launch is that?
It turns out that T-Mobile is anxious to let its customers get their hands on Nokia’s 3G compatible 6630 handset. So it is offering price plans that enable you to purchase one, even though the operator has yet to launch a full 3G voice network. It has been offering 3G data cards for a while, though.

Labelled as its online ‘offer of the week’, you can get the 6630 absolutely free and pay half the line rental cost (£21) for six months. It’ll then go up to £42 per month.

What that seems to suggest is that T-Mobile won’t bother to offer a full 3G service until September 2005. Why is T-Mobile offering the handset now when the 6630 will only support “3G services when they launch”?

The answer seems to lie with the fact that it has 10MB of internal memory as well as a 64MB MMC card. So purchasers “can store loads of pictures, games and videos too. And the phone is future proof.”

Don’t lose the 6630, though, because you’ll have to pay £370 to replace it without insurance. That’s rich coming from an operator which is insisting that subsidies on pre-pay phones are unnecessary.