T-Mobile USA Presents: The BlackBerry 8800
Yes, I know it’s already been posted a few times that T-Mobile will start taking orders, processing and shipping the BlackBerry 8800 to it’s customers tomorrow morning. This will relate to those announcements, but I will veer to left…slightly.
At my previous company, one of my last meetings involved sales and technical representatives from T-Mobile visiting and making some presentations in our board room concerning T-Mobile’s future technology implementations and offerings, as well as some less-than-thought-provoking discussions surrounding future device releases.
To cover the technology deployments: T-Mobile@Home, the UMA/GAN offering, is right around the corner, with late-stage beta testing going live in recent weeks in Houston, Atlanta, New York, and various other major cities around the nation. T-Mobile’s UMTS network infrastructure is in place as of the end of April and they are currently waiting on the private and government sectors to release the frequencies purchased in last year’s auctions to go live with the service.
Needless to say, one of the more interesting statements made during that meeting was the reflection of why T-Mobile doesn’t get swept away in the exclusivity train that seems to have direct routes running daily through Atlanta, GA and Basking Ridge, NJ. It was said that they let the other carriers operate as the guinea pigs for the device manufacturers in order to have the bugs worked out in time for a launch to their own customers. I can understand this business strategy, but it’d be nice if they actually believed what they told their customers, right?
Oh, I suppose I should stop writing and show something I happened to stumble upon, right?
It appears the BlackBerry 8800 from T-Mobile will ship with OS package 4.2.1.111, just slightly newer than that of AT&T/Cingular’s current OS package 4.2.1.109 release. You can download it here, if you’d like. Rogers has recently launched their 8800 device with OS package 4.2.1.138 and Cingular is readying the OS package 4.2.1.139 for release to the masses.
Ahh, the joys of playing catch-up while not having a ’guinea pig’ iron-on plastered on your pink-collared white t-shirt. I wish the marketing responses during these sort of meetings were in line with the undesireable approach in paying exclusivity fees for device launches rather than taking the angle of allowing the "bugs to be worked out".
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