HoFo Blog

Today, we announced the thrilling news that T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS will combine to create the premier challenger in the U.S. wireless industry. The new, publicly-traded company will retain the T-Mobile name.

This isn't a deal to survive – it's to thrive. This is a terrific opportunity for two companies with a shared commitment to innovation and customer service to come together to improve the way you communicate. We're here to compete. We're here to unlock value.

And we're here to win.

This transaction will significantly accelerate T-Mobile's Challenger Strategy – the new company will be a bigger, better, bolder wireless challenger with the expanded scale, spectrum and resources to compete more fiercely with other national U.S. wireless carriers.

Together, the combined entity will be able to:

· Leverage a faster, stronger and more reliable network to provide amazing 4G services. We'll have unsurpassed speed and reliability through a denser, higher-capacity network and deeper LTE coverage in key metropolitan areas such as New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. We'll have greater network coverage and a path to at least 20x20 MHz of LTE in many areas.
· Provide customers more choices, including an expanded selection of affordable products and services, such as contract, no-contract monthly, SIM-only, pay-as-you-go and mobile broadband, and our most compelling line up of devices – phones, tablets, hot spots, or other future networked devices.
· Offer bold, compelling and unique 4G plans including T-Mobile's Unlimited Nationwide 4G and MetroPCS's 4G for All.
· Offer a superior customer experience to more subscribers in more metro areas through more than 70,000 customer touchpoints.
Today's announcement is the first step in this process. We anticipate that the transaction will close in the first half of 2013, following the required MetroPCS shareholder and customary regulatory approvals. In the meantime, T-Mobile and MetroPCS will continue to operate as separate companies. After closing, T-Mobile will be a separate customer unit of the combined company.

Together, T-Mobile and MetroPCS will be a stronger player in the industry. We're creating a value-oriented challenger to the existing national carriers – one with the scale to deliver greater network coverage and a wider range of product offerings to better fulfill your needs. ...

*EDIT* LTE service has now been fixed as of around 9AM 10/3. Outage lasted around 15hrs. Reboot your phone if you don't see LTE.

I'm in Oakville right now and I haven't been able to get onto Rogers LTE with any of my Rogers lines since before 7pm EST today. I'm stuck on HSPA.

Is it due to the new iPhone 5? Did Rogers just get iPn'd?

Looks like it's a Nation-wide LTE Outage. Rogers is saying they're working on a fix.

One member PM'd me suggesting it's a HSS problem.

...

My friend Ray recently gave me a call. He was in-between iPhones and wanted to borrow something for a week. I guess he figured I'd lend him something old - possibly with a keypad. So I can imagine his surprise when I offered to lend him my HTC One X.

Now Ray is an interesting fellow. He's a die hard Mac fan. He owns a Macbook, MacPro, iPhone and puts Apple stickers on his cars. I'm sure he's got a bunch of 'think different' T-shirts in his wardrobe too.

It's not that Ray hates PC's, cars without Apple stickers and plain T-Shirts. It's just that he just really loves Apple stuff. So the reason he doesn't use Android phones is not because he thinks they're inferior - it's just that Apple products work really well for him so he's never really considered anything else.

He follows tech news and knows what an HTC One X or Galaxy S III is but he's not that aware of all the features they have.

The reason I lent him a One X was not to try to convert him to Android. Rather I wanted him to give Android a try so that he could give me his thoughts on it. It's not meant to be a 'Why Android sucks or Why Apple sucks article'. Note the he's going from an iPhone 4 running iOS 5 to a HTC One X (He actually wrote this before the iPhone 5 launch). So the HTC One X is going to be a big step up for him. Here's what he wrote: ...

We’re back! In case you haven't noticed, we’ve been using HowardForum.com as a temporary domain for the past 13 days. Our domain name HowardForums.com was stolen and we only got it back on Friday afternoon. I held off posting about this because I wanted to wait for the DNS change to fully propagate. In case you’re not aware of what happened here’s a timeline of what happened along with a touching correspondence with the domain thief: ...

*EDIT* TELUS has confirmed they're getting the One X+. It's actually coming 'soon' so It's probably going to be a Q4 phone. The HTC webpage says it will come with 64GB of storage.

Just heard a rumor that the HTC One X+ is coming to TELUS in January. I think it's going to be a 16GB version in white.

Apparently, the One X+ will look virtually identical to the One X. I don't have other details on exact specifications but other rumors are saying the One X+ will sport Android 4.1 Jellybean, a quad-core 1.6Ghz Tegra 3 AP37 SOC with LTE support. Otherwise, it's quite similar to the One X. 4.7" Super LCD, 8MP, etc.

The timing seems about right for a refresh of the One X. Come January HTC will need something to keep consumers interested, while they wait for phones which are announced at CES (in January) to become available.
...

While iPhones have changed dramatically since the first one was launched 4 years ago, one thing that hasn't changed is the size. They've all sported 3.5” displays. While, I think 3.5” works well on an iPhone, it’s hard to ignore the giant screens found on it’s competitors.

As such, the new iPhone 5 sports a 4” display. The biggest ever found on an iPhone though still much smaller than pretty much all it’s competitors. But as they say ‘size doesn't matter’.

...

*Edit* Sale is from Sept 28 - Oct 1

Looks like it's opposite day. Now it seems Bell is about to drop the price ...