The carrier told that not even substitutes for HTC Android devices suggested by Apple included Android smartphones made by other manufacturers. Apple only designated operating systems that were alternatives to Android, such as Microsoft Windows, BlackBerry OS and, of course, iOS for iPhone.

T-Mobile added that HTC, among other Android producers, had a unique relationship. The carrier launched the first Android-based phone with the G1 of HTC in October 2008. it has also been the host of other Google phones like the Nexus One or the Nexus S. one of the most important devices T-Mobile prepares for the holidays in the absence of an iPhone will be the Amaze 4G.

T-Mobile suggested instead that it wanted a transition of four to six months to escape the dependency on any supposed infringing hardware. Its argument was mainly recasting the amicus brief in the Apple-Samsung lawsuit, excepting its argument related to preservation of holiday sales.

When it comes to Google, it has been significantly more aggressive and intended to obtain a denial of the same ban no matter what the terms would be. Adopting an ideological tone, Google sees Android as a necessary force and provides room and choice for alternate application stores like the Amazon Appstore and developers as well. It portrayed Apple as over-controlling its platform. It also suggested that Apple, being the largest maker of individual US smartphones, would only worsen competition and could create a monopoly if HTC was forced to leave the market.

In the absence of HTC there would be serious implications on the market, such as increase of prices, diminishment of services, a decrease of the consumers’ access to the technology and reduced innovation, said Google. As the US military was using Android-based devices, a reduced presence of Android may hurt public safety. Other effects refer to ceasing networks development in the absence of partnerships between phone producers and carriers, while innovation itself would suffer.

It is doubtful that the arguments may have any impact. Neither argument questions the validity of the claims for patent violation. However, they maintain the idea that market requirements outlined the disadvantages of an eventual duplication of Apple’s technology. Excepting the suggested transition of T-Mobile, neither had a path getting HTC out of the believed infringement and deny the stress for a ban.

ITC might accept some parts of HTC’s appeal, but Apple could still get some of its claims upheld and would end up the same way as if it won the war upright. It is possible to see HTC pushed into a certain settlement with the hardware taken off the market while waiting for its own counterattacks to pass through the ITC and courts as well, where they might not be successful.

Andrew Sherrard, Senior Vice president of Marketing at T-Mobile, made some observations. He said that the iPhone is a good handset and the carrier has expressed its interest to Apple in order to offer the phone to its customers. The ultimate decision is, however, Apple’s. There is still an issue that Apple did not develop a model of the iPhone capable of working on T-Mobile’s fast 3G and 4G networks. The carrier believes that a version of the iPhone able to work on its networks would be an attractive option for its customers. After all, the iPhone is not the only smartphone offer capable to satisfy the users’ requirements, added Sherrard.

The iPhone is a world phone which supports a wide range of CDMA and GSM networks, but the radio of the iPhone 4S is not compatible with the 1,700MHz frequency of T-Mobile.

The expansion of the iPhone range is a permanent point of interest of Apple. The 3GS was maintained in its current line-up in the category of entry-level devices alongside the newer 4 and 4S models. It has been adding additional carriers each year, although T-Mobile is believed to be the most known US carrier not having the device yet.

Apple has not commented on the topic, but it is likely that moving to a true 4G LTE chipset would certainly show T-Mobile joining the other carriers that sell the iPhone together with Android devices.

The DOJ promised to protect consumers from the anticompetitive behavior that could result from a transaction of this kind.

AT&T, like in every occasion it has faced opposition to the lawsuit, downplayed the importance of the deal. As the carrier said, such involvement was not uncommon for states, no matter what the deal was. AT&T even went further by trying to demonstrate its numeric advantage given to it by eleven state attorneys general as well as many officials belonging to the federal or local level who were backing the deal.

Even the Democrats, through the voice of fifteen Congress members, supported the company.

Of course there are lawsuits that oppose mergers in the United States, but they occur for a quite small minority of proposed mergers and usually mean there is a possibility for the merger to be denied outright. According to AT&T, the company would negotiate a settlement, but the existence of the lawsuit signifies the Department of Justice does not believe that an amount of divested network areas or some price guarantees could resolve the problem.

Much of the recent action appeared a short time after AT&T posted a version of a filing saying that it needed only $3.8 billion to attain the 95 to 97 percent of LTE coverage the company had promised with the merger. The carrier has officially declared that it still needed to spend about ten times more in order to eliminate one of its major competitors that had the same goal. However, it has never mentioned the direct implications of either having made false statements about its initial needs for LTE or of the necessity of the merger.

AT&T and T-Mobile were also sued by Sprint because it would have to struggle against a rival having majority market share and significantly more control over elements like prices, device choice or network rates.

Other deals like the merger of Verizon and Alltel have forced the acquiring carrier to divest some cellular licenses at least, in order to allow a smaller carrier to buy them and this way improve its network. Mandating price limits or roaming agreements, or even net neutrality terms would be other options the FCC could adopt. This kind of terms can be limited to a number of years, assuming that they would not be necessary later.

Considering the AT&T-T-Mobile deal, the former mentioned that it was confident the takeover estimated at $39 billion would be approved and used a patriotic approach to impress the FCC. Some of its promises have been to spread LTE to 95 percent of the population, to create new jobs and to improve the use of wireless spectrum for future broadband. Some critics have said that LTE could get additional coverage regardless that the merger would consolidate spectrum, and also that claims related to strong competition were false, as Sprint, US Cellular or other competitors had much smaller sizes.

Attempts of pushing the deal through would spur on FCC regulation in its process of reaching a final decision. At the CTIA opening keynote, Genachowski said that a vote on data roaming was expected at the commission’s meeting on April 7 and that he would insist for lower rates of roaming and required roaming agreements. Advocates of this idea have argued that the current situation would let companies like Verizon and AT&T shut out their rivals by either negotiating unfair roaming rates or simply refusing a roaming deal.

T-Mobile has announced to bring an adaptation of the LG Optimus 2X, named the T-Mobile G2X, as well as the LG G-Slate to market during this spring. However, it has not mentioned the Optimus 3D, while AT&T had announced the device as the LG Thrill 4G at CTIA. Therefore, it was a surprise to see that a model of the LG Optimus 3D would be compatible with T-Mobile’s network, while everybody expected the Optimus G2X to reach the FCC for approval.

The Optimus 3D is equipped with a Texas Instruments OMAP4 dual-core processor, which is clocked at 1GHz. It is said that its graphic core is twice as powerful as the correspondent of its “nearest competitor”, which was, at the time of the announcement, the NVIDIA Tegra 2. It sports up to four times as many decoders which allow it to have the graphics power required for its 3D viewing and recording expected performances.

The company said that T-Mobile USA would remain an independent entity and that the acquisition would be finished in about twelve months. The iPhone would not be offered in the near future, but cutting edge phones like the Galaxy S 4G of Samsung and the new Sidekick 4G represent a good choice.

An immediate plan was not expected due to the nature of the current GSM iPhone. The iPhone 4 has no 1,700MHz 3G support and therefore is limited to 2G (EDGE) for data, which represents a disadvantage compared to the AT&T device. There were rumors of the iPhone 5 on T-Mobile, but if they are true the carrier would receive a one-off device which would be unnecessary after the merge.

The company has lately become elusive on this topic and refused to either deny or confirm its intentions related to the iPhone. However, it has made use of the same language Verizon used when a deal was imminent and it did not want to make public its plans and risk seeing its Android sales decrease.

On the other hand, AT&T said that its announced buyout of T-Mobile would be beneficial to customers belonging to both networks, as it would include an improved coverage and would allow T-Mobile users to access LTE-based 4G.

Both companies claimed that carrier competition would still stay in the United States, since five or even more carriers were present in eighteen of the top twenty cities. As the companies said, there is an escalation of battles between large and small carriers and it would be even more acerb as 4G creates a more common battleground. Concluding this deal is still dependent on regulatory approval, while a breakup fee is also possible. Both companies hoped to complete the deal within a year.

This takeover comes in spite of repeated and strong rumors related to a Sprint/T-Mobile deal and is supposed to cause a major problem in smartphone market share. Since T-Mobile cell sites will start using AT&T’s frequencies, T-Mobile users will be able to get the iPhone without forcing Apple to make a separate model. As T-Mobile was using a rare 1,700MHz band, it needed special-run models of a phone or was entirely locked out.

However, Android could be the one to face the greatest damage following this deal. Being the original carrier of Android, T-Mobile has always been the preferred carrier to get “halo” phones from Google, such as the myTouch 3G, G1, Nexus One or nexus S. nevertheless, it lost this position quickly enough, after the launch of the Motorola Droid on Verizon, but permanently contributed significant share. The iPhone always dominated AT&T and this position was not menaced even after the launch of some flagship phones like the Atrix of Motorola or the Captivate of Samsung. Therefore, some T-Mobile users could trade in Android or could get the iPhone as the first smartphone they would buy.

Another addition would be the Nokia C7, a mid-range Symbian^3 phone, supposed to reach the carrier as the Tiger. The phone would be equipped with a 3.5-inch AMOLED screen, 8GB of internal storage and an eight-megapixel camera. Tiger phones are supposed to ship this month and the only change known so far is the switch to native 3G.

A third element revealed by the leaks is a new data plan dedicated to extremely bandwidth-heavy users. A new $80 Even More webConnect plan is supposed to have an unlimited data plan similar to the $50 plan, but bringing the alternative of limiting the traffic at 10GB instead of the current 5GB. The price of the new plan would be similar to the Verizon 10GB plan but it is expected to be stronger as it will skip overage fees.

March 13 is the date for T-Mobile’s new 10GB data plan to go live. Its price would drop to $63 per month for users who already have a voice plan. Prices of the 5GB plan and also the basic 200MB plan are believed to drop to $40 and respectively $24 per month, while the terms would be kept.

Dell’s device is the first unequivocal tablet design of the company and is significantly upgraded in speed with its dual-core Tegra 2 capable of handling Adobe Flash. It has only Android 2.2 so far but will use the recent Stage interface to adapt partly the operating system for its larger screen. Video chat is served by its front and back cameras through Qik and other applications. A faster 3G will give it sufficient speed to stream the Internet TV service of T-Mobile.

The tablet may disappoint some customers because it has only standard Android 2.2, while Motorola as well as many other companies are using the 3.0 version. However, it is so far the cheapest Android tablet coming from a mainstream company.

Fring is already working on cellulars but is application-specific. Apple’s FaceTime is limited to iOS devices and to Wi-Fi networks. Apple declared to support video chat applications using 3G, Fring being included. Many iPhone live streaming applications, such as Ustream, Qik or Justin.tv are already able to transmit video content over 3G through a front camera, but usually are only one-way.

The application has already been presented to Google and Apple and waits for a soon approval. Yahoo Messenger and video chat included have always been free.