T-Mobile iPhone

Wednesday's tech news roundup is at full throttle:

T-Mobile will launch a truly unlimited data plan beginning Sept. 5. No caps or throttling. Sprint also offers this, but T-Mobile is competing with pricing. Sprint's starting price for unlimited data is $80 a month, and users are limited to 450 voice minutes. T-Mobile also starts it at $80 a month, but throws in 500 minutes. The larger difference is when you want both unlimited data and unlimited talk; Sprint charges $110, T-Mobile charges $90 a month. Of course, there's also smartphone choice and service to consider. T-Mobile will … Read more

Kindle Fire could disrupt iPad's tablet dominance, Facebook cookies track users after logging off, the Facebook iPad app could be announced next week, and Sprint will be rolling out its own 4G LTE wireless network.

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

If there was any lingering hope that T-Mobile USA would start offering the iPhone soon, the carrier's marketing chief just killed it.

T-Mobile Chief Marketing Officer Cole Brodman posted a letter to customers on the company's blog yesterday, saying that while he would love to carry the iPhone, the company is currently focusing on "the best that Android has to offer." Translation: T-Mobile is definitely not getting the iPhone in the near future.

T-Mobile now stands as the only national carrier left out of the iPhone game, with all indications pointing to Sprint Nextel joining AT&T and Verizon Wireless as an Apple partner. That's a significant disadvantage for the company, which is already struggling to return to growth and stem customer defection.

"We've heard from many customers who love their T-Mobile service but are disappointed that we don't carry the iPhone," he said in his letter. "To these customers, first, thank you for your business."

He did note that more than 1 million T-Mobile customers use an unlocked iPhone on its network. The GSM version of the iPhone--which is what AT&T uses--can be moved on to T-Mobile's network but can only access the slower 2G network. Brodman reiterated his interest in a "no compromise" iPhone experience on its network. … Read more

Just because T-Mobile is the underdog of the litter doesn't mean it relishes its place as the runt of the litter, especially when it comes to the iPhone.

The carrier's chief marketing officer, Cole Brodman, made that plain enough when addressing attendees at the Mobilize conference today in San Francisco. "We've made public our desire to have the iPhone," he said.

T-Mobile faces the reality of being the odd man out when the iPhone 5 comes around this fall. AT&T and Verizon already have relationships with Apple and currently carry the iPhone 4. … Read more

Carol Bartz was fired this week from her job as Yahoo CEO, but she didn't leave quietly.

In a note sent to Yahoo employees Tuesday, Bartz said the company's board had fired her. "I am very sad to tell you that I've just been fired over the phone by Yahoo's chairman of the board," Bartz wrote. "It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward."

In her first interview after the firing, however, she was a little less diplomatic. "These people fucked me over," Bartz told Fortune.

Bartz, who in the interim has been replaced by Chief Financial Officer Tim Morse, will receive a severance package topping $10 million, according to regulatory filings. When she took over the CEO role from co-founder Jerry Yang in January 2009, the company was struggling to become more competitive and profitable. One of her first tasks as CEO was a reorganization of Yahoo in an attempt to make the Internet pioneer faster, simpler, and more responsive to those who use its services. But under her leadership Yahoo has continued to founder, never regaining the ground it lost to Web leader Google.

Some, however, believe that the board of directors is to blame for the Bartz flameout and other company failures, and that Bartz was set up to fail. One major Yahoo shareholder wants to see a whole new board of directors at the company. … Read more

Carol Bartz is out at Yahoo and the stock is up, which has got to hurt. They're still raking in the cash, but shareholders hate nothing more than a plateau. Plus, Netflix swears that at least this time, its jerk move (restricting users to only one stream at a time) was a total accident, and they're definitely not doing that. Promise. Plus, Groupon's IPO roadshow is off and the IPO itself may be off for good, and the Droid Bionic has finally arrived. Hooray!

There's a curious line of thinking going around that suggests that if Sprint lands the next iPhone as rumored, the handset would undercut the carrier's push to stop the proposed AT&T and T-Mobile merger. As Frost & Sullivan analyst Brent Iadarola puts it in a recent CNN Money post, the win of an iPhone would "weaken Sprint's core argument that a duopolistic wireless market would limit consumer choice" and that it would "represent an odd kind of win for AT&T."

The writer of the story, David Goldman, quotes a … Read more

On Call runs every two weeks, alternating between answering reader questions and discussing hot topics in the cell phone world.

By now I'm sure that you're familiar with the arguments against the proposed AT&T-T-Mobile merger. As critics see it, the deal will put too much power in the hands of one carrier (and one GSM carrier, at that), it will reduce customer choice and innovation, and it will lead to higher prices and poorer customer service.

Those all are valid points, but I'm more worried about something that hasn't received a lot of attention. … Read more