In addition to T-Mobile announcing that they'll start selling Apple products in 2013, is the potentially more interesting fact that they'll stop selling subsidized phones. Speaking at Deutsche Telekom's annual investor conference, T-Mobile CEO John Legere confirmed that subsidized phones will no longer be a part of the company's business model next year, with consumers either paying full price for devices, or choosing to pay the device off in installments.

T-Mobile will offer the iPhone to consumers, for example, if they pay an up front $99 and then pay off the remaining cost of the device through $15 to $20 monthly payments tacked on to their existing bill. T-Mobile hopes that this helps differentiate them in the market moving forward.

"We think there is a huge room for a carrier to change in a way that the larger players will choose to or will not be able to respond to," said Legere.

Legere also insisted that while their value (non-subsidized phone) plans earn them less revenue, they'll make up the difference by not having to subsidize devices. The CEO also noted that Value customers tend to stay on board an average of two months longer than Classic customers do.

It remains unclear when T-Mobile will launch the iPhone or LTE, but the company made it clear a core part of their strategy will be picking on AT&T. The CEO announced that a core marketing slogan for the company will be: "you love you iPhone, you hate AT&T." "I want you to get used to that tone because that is the way we're going to play," insisted a CEO whose company just a few months ago was eager to merge with AT&T.

While T-Mobile won't be getting the new LTE-based iPhone this week, they're pulling out all the stops to ensure that the damage caused by that fact will be minimal. The carrier has stated they're pushing out HSPA+ in the 1900 MHz band so unlocked iPhones can use their faster network, and they also hope that their recently announced return to unlimited data can also help differentiate the carrier.

T-Mobile today announced that the company has pushed their HSPA+ 42 upgrades in 11 additional markets: Bend, Medford and Corvallis, Oregon; Benton Harbor, Michigan; Bloomington, Champaign–Urbana and Springfield, Illinois; Columbus, Georgia; Hagerstown, Maryland; Montgomery, Alabama; and Yuba City, California. The company says they've also upgraded a number of markets with HSPA+ 21: Corvallis, Oregon; Decatur and Peoria, Illlinois; Evansville, Indiana; Holland and Kalamazoo, Michigan; Santa Barbara, California; State College, Pennsylvania; and Yuba City, California. According to T-Mobile, the fastest version of their HSPA+ upgrades (advertised as capable of 42 Mbps but delivering something closer to 10 Mbps) are now available to almost 180 million users across 163 markets.

• Broadband Providers Add 350,000 Subs In Q2; Top MSOs Account For 77% Of New High-Speed Customers In Period [multichannel.com]
• Mobile operators: US quake proves we need more spectrum. (though no networks actually failed...) [theregister.co.uk]
• China Mobile becomes worlds largest mobile operator - and it didn't even need the iPhone to do it [theregister.co.uk]
• Surprise! NCTA joins ACA in accusing telcos of an unacceptable USF plan [multichannel.com]
• Wash. Post 'Editorial' claims piracy costs companies millions, believes Protect-IP won't be more sweeping g than is necessary [techdirt.com]
• SF's BART directors agree to limit wireless system shutdowns [fiercewireless.com]
• Cablevision snuggles up closer to Sprint [lightreading.com]
• Hulu bid deadline extended to end of week [totaltele.com]
• MIT researchers craft defense against wireless man-in-the-middle attacks [computerworld.com]
• NJ lab, Shanghai demo center and Connected car share TD-LTE call [gomonews.com]
• Analyst: Google should win Hulu [multichannel.com]
• "The Expendables" makers dismiss massive bittorrent lawsuit [torrentfreak.com]
• ICE Homeland Security agents arrest 19 year-old streaming site admin [torrentfreak.com]
• Facebook kills Places' check-in feature [MSNBC.com]
• AT&T, T-Mobile, & Sprint to offer Samsung Galaxy S II [fiercewireless.com]

T-Mobile has been differentiating their services by throttling customers who exceed usage caps instead of imposing costly overage -- but according to leaked data obtained by TMONews, T-Mobile is about to return to imposing overages on their lowest wireless broadband tier. As of August 13, users will face $0.10 per MB penalties for every megabyte consumed over the 200MB. Those users will face a maximum overage charge limit of $30 on the Classic Plans and a maximum overage charge limit of $35 on Value plans. Users on the plan will receive notices at both 180MB and 200MB Users on current plans will be grandfathered. T-Mobile had been marketing their no overage penalty approach as competitive alternative, but now says they need to impose these fees "in order to remain competitive."

Carriers like Sprint, AT&T and Verizon are all rushing into plans that involve using your smartphone to make store purchases. The plans for all three carriers involve using near field communications (NFC) technology embedded in smartphones to allow users to simply swipe their phones at the cash register.

• Apple location tracker file: Congressman asks Steve Jobs to explain by May 12 [latimes.com]
• Amid Objections, AT&T Officially Files With FCC to Buy T-Mobile [wired.com]
• A Clash Over the Airwaves [nytimes.com]
• Digital Return: Addressing The Upstream Challenge [cable360.net]
• Why the iPhone 5 won't have Verizon 4G [cnet.com]
• Smartphones: the future of in-car entertainment [pcpro.co.uk]
• Ericsson predicts 64 LTE networks by 2013 [gomonews.com]
• Amazon Web Services Starting to Come Back Online but Problems Persist and Questions Unfold [readwriteweb.com]
• Is cost per bit a reliable metric for wireless data? [fiercewireless.com]
• Apple to beat Google on cloud music [reuters.com]
• Samsung counter sues Apple over iPhone, iPad [reuters.com]
• Apple Invents New Peer-to-Peer Sharing Technology [patentlyapple.com]

Despite their looming acquisition by AT&T, T-Mobile has been keeping busy, continuing to deploy planned HSPA+ upgrades and today introducing two new unlimited service tiers. The company's new "Even More" and "Even More Plus" plans offer subscribers unlimited nationwide voice calling, unlimited messaging and unlimited data. Even More is available for $80 a month to contract customers, while Even More Plus is available for $60 to prepaid customers. "Consumers exceeding 2GB of usage in a billing month will still have access to unlimited data at reduced speeds until their new billing cycle starts," notes T-Mobile's announcement -- which insists that "on average," most T-Mobile users use 1GB a month. According to T-Mobile, the new plans are available for "a limited time."

Buried underneath talk of an AT&T acquisition, T-Mobile today unveiled the first cities that will be getting their faster 42 Mbps HSPA+ service: New York City, Orlando and Las Vegas. According to a company announcement, these launches will be followed closely by launches in Chicago, Long Island, and portions of New Jersey, with the company's goal being to deliver the faster service to 140 million Americans in 25 markets by the middle of this year.

T-Mobile is preparing to launch the latest version of their T-Mobile Jet USB modem, this one offering support for the faster HSPA+ upgrades T-Mobile has been deploying around the country. According to TmoNews and their bottomless well of leaked T-Mobile employee screenshots, the device will drop on March 23. The device will support HSPA+ downstream speeds up to 21 Mbps, though real network performance usually tends to be around half that or less depending on location. Roughly 200 million people in 100 major metro markets have access to some flavor of HSPA+ connectivity from T-Mobile, though T-Mobile hopes to have 140 million people covered in 25 major metro markets with even faster HSPA+ (up to 42 Mbps) speeds by midyear.

Hoping to counter the launch of the Verizon iPhone, T-Mobile has announced via press release that the company will be offering all of their phones for free this upcoming weekend, assuming you sign up for the usual two-year long-term contract. That includes many of T-Mobile's more popular smartphones, including the HTC HD7, the G2, the Samsung Vibrant and the myTouch 4G, though you may have to sign up for specific plans and mail in rebate cards for some devices. The move comes as T-Mobile has been making it very clear they hope to take over Sprint's third-place spot sometime in the next few years. Part of that strategy involves an expected deal to acquire spectrum from Clearwire to fuel an LTE expansion (after HSPA+ runs out of legroom), as well as a new ad campaign that takes potshots and AT&T and Verizon.

The latest report from J.D. Power and Associates on wireless customer care performance once again ranks T-Mobile as the best carrier when it comes to customer support.

Last fall T-Mobile really decided to shake up their marketing strategy, and began a new ad campaign that declared their HSPA+ (really more like 3.5G) upgrades meant they had the "the biggest 4G network." The campaign also involves taking bigger shots at AT&T, portraying the company as a balding middle-aged man holding back the iPhone. Now a new set of T-Mobile ads take aim at Verizon now that big red has obtained the iPhone. The ads portray both AT&T and Verizon as essentially the same -- while continuing T-Mobile's misleading claims that only T-Mobile has a nationwide 4G network. Given the ITU and carrier marketing departments recently butchered the term, pretty much everything short of carrier pigeon can now be called 4G. Sure, everybody was already abusing the term anyway, but T-Mobile has taken the network braggadocio to an entirely new level.

T-Mobile's latest round of HSPA+ network upgrades deliver theoretical speeds up to 21 Mbps, and the first smartphone that will take advantage of that speed will be the Samsung Vibrant 4G. According to leaked documents posted to TmoNews, the device is part of the Galaxy family of phones, and will be a T-Mobile exclusive. Previous leaked documents have shown that T-Mobile is preparing to launch two different MiFi mobile hotspot devices that will support the faster speeds over the next few weeks. While T-Mobile's HSPA+ upgrades suggest 21 Mbps, customers in the real world will likely see half that -- though T-Mobile is working on pushing their HSPA+ network to 40 Mbps and beyond.

A few weeks ago, AT&T released a study (but no raw data) funded by AT&T and conducted by Global Wireless, which proclaimed that AT&T operated the fastest wireless network, hands down. According to the study, AT&T's network was the fastest by "a wide margin," with competitors T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint lagging "by 20 to 60% in national average mobile broadband speed." Now T-Mobile, whose marketing department is punching a little harder than usual, has released a study claiming they offer the fastest wireless data performance in the top 100 U.S.

According to a joint press release by T-Mobile and Nokia Siemens, the two companies are collaborating on the Long Term HSPA Evolution standard, which they promise will someday be able to deliver speeds upwards of 650 Mbps downstream. The announcement comes on the heels of T-Mobile (and everybody else) ignoring new ITU standards declaring that nothing currently being deployed under the "next gen" or 4G label is actually 4G.

Confirming leaks from last week, T-Mobile this morning announced a number of new data pricing changes and the official arrival of their official tethering plan. According to T-Mobile, the company is now offering two new plans: the The Web 200MB plan sports 200 MB of usage for $10 a month with two-year contract or $15 a month with no contract. The The Web Unlimited plan remains $30 for "unlimited" (technically by "unlimited" they mean you get 5GB of usage after which you get throttled back to 64 kbps for the remainder of your billing cycle) service. As rumored, T-Mobile's now making tethering an official $15 per month addition -- though it can only be used with the company's $30 unlimited plan.

T-Mobile today announced that they continue to deploy speedy HSPA+ upgrades (providing usually around 10 Mbps downstream) to additional markets. According to a T-Mobile announcement, T-Mobile has now launched these new speeds in 16 additional markets (including Oakland, San Francisco, Phoenix and Denver), bringing their upgraded HSPA+ total to 65 major metro areas. The company also announced their second HSPA+ phone -- an upgraded version of the Android-powered HTC MyTouch, which features a new video chat feauture that works over either 3G or Wi-Fi (phone specs are now up at the T-Mobile website).

Despite recent conversations between Clearwire and T-Mobile about being a wholesale Mobile WiMax partner, T-Mobile this week indicated they're more interested in jumping on the LTE bandwagon once the technology has matured. "We’ll look towards LTE at the right point in time for us," Neville Ray, T-Mobile USA’s chief network officer tells Bloomberg. "That ecosystem is going to be much richer than the competing one from WiMax, which is really a niche play." Until then, T-Mobile hopes to milk HSPA's lifespan by eventually deploying 3G service capable of speeds approaching 42 Mbps downstream.

For years wireless carriers have played fast and loose with the word "unlimited," advertising their services as such but then quietly imposing caps (usually 5 GB) or other restrictions. While Verizon Wireless had their wrist slapped back in 2007 for the practice by New York's Attorney General, that still didn't stop many carriers from continuing the practice.