Though AT&T (NYSE:T) may be bypassing evolved high speed packet access (or HSPA+), T-Mobile (NYSE:DT) has no intention of skipping the newest evolutionary step in 3G. Delivering a keynote address at 4G World in Chicago today, senior vice president of engineering and operations Neville Ray reiterated T-Mobile’s plans to deploy HSPA+ in 2009 and 2010, as well as revealed that T-Mobile’s first HSPA+ networks are already up and running in Philadelphia.

Using higher-order modulation techniques embedded and new software, HSPA+ dramatically boosts the downlink capacity available over a 3G channel. Most HSPA networks in the US now support between 1.8 Mb/s and 3.6 Mb/s, though both T-Mobile and AT&T are in the process of upgrading those capacities to 7.2 Mb/s. HSPA+, however, would increase bandwidth to 21 Mb/s, six times faster than current networks speeds.

While the iPhone app store has quickly stamped out 75,000 apps and stolen the lion’s share of attention, is the app store the right approach?

An interesting post over on the Telco 2.0 blog (run by U.K. consultancy STL Partners), which earlier this year made the bold claim that Litmus, the developer program for U.K. mobile operator O2, is “better than the Apple app store.” more