The company also offers both clientless and client-server acceleration services and a service called DataLink, which optimizes TCP transport services for PDAs and laptops. It partners with SEVEN for both personal and behind-the-firewall mobile e-mail and PIM (personal information management) services.
Sprint claims to offer dedicated frame relay and network-based VPN connections to customer networks. In response to our question about IP addressing options, the company said it offers only dynamically assigned public IP addresses. This surprised us because static IP addressing is a key requirement for enterprise customers, and we had expected Sprint to provide this service.
T-Mobile U.S.A., a division of Deutsche Telekom AG, serves 15.4 million U.S. voice and data customers and is growing faster than any other provider, with a 35 percent year-to-year increase in subscribers, according to Q2 2004 numbers. T-Mobile has also been an innovator in the U.S. market as the first to deploy a nationwide network compatible with the predominant global GSM standard and the first cellular carrier to jump into the Wi-Fi hotspot market. With more than 4,700 Wi-Fi locations, including high-profile nationwide installations at Starbucks, Borders and Kinko's, it is the undisputed leader among carriers. The company also has a reputation for aggressive pricing of data services, especially in the consumer market. For example, it is the only U.S. carrier to offer the ultra-hip Danger Sidekick smartphone, and the first carrier to offer the new iPAQ h6315 Pocket PC smartphone with integrated GSM, GPRS and 802.11b Wi-Fi capabilities.
T-Mobile's response to our RFI was sparse, and the company declined our request for a phone interview to delve more deeply into its coverage, indicating all its staff were focused on new product and service announcements. But given Network Computing's large enterprise readership, that has to make you wonder how serious the company is about the enterprise data market. Although it offers a nationwide moderate-speed GPRS service, it does not provide higher-speed EDGE services like those offered by Cingular and AT&T Wireless. The company's response to our question about its future road map for wireless data was met with a one-sentence response saying it had performed extensive testing last year and is "upgrading its sites to EDGE in the United States."
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