T-Mobile HSPA 7.2 upgrade complete, HSPA+ coming to devices later this year

Regular readers know I have stuck with T-Mobile for over 8 years in hopes that they would catch up their data network with the rest of the US wireless carriers. I jumped on the T-Mobile G1 when it was available in large part due to the support for 3G on T-Mobile. Unfortunately, it then took about another year before I had T-Mobile where I live, work, and play and now get 3G all over the place. T-Mobile is now passing up AT&T with confirmation that their HSPA 7.2Mbps network is now enabled across their entire 3G network. This 3G network is also constantly growing and now reaches over 200 million Americans. In addition, they have rolled out HSPA+ with 21Mbps (theoretical) speeds in Philadelphia and this will be much more prevalent by mid-2010.

I have been seeing 3Mbps download speeds on the Nokia N900 in Washington State, but my buddy Kevin in the Philly area is seeing even faster with the HSPA+ network. As you can read in his speed test post he saw over 7Mbps on the Nokia N900 that supports speeds up to 10Mbps. Wow, it looks like my patience with T-Mobile is paying off now. The nice thing about being the smallest of the four carriers is that it doesn't seem like there is any kind of network overload issue like we see with AT&T. I actually can't even remember when I last had a dropped call. Network speeds and reliability is one reason I ordered my own Google Nexus One that will be here tomorrow too.