T-Mobile has made good on their promise to get 3G up and running by this summer. Yesterday, in New York City, the first reports of the service were given. Contrary to earlier reports, there is data access. It is not clear if it will stay that way, as T-Mobile could very well honor their earlier statement, and make it voice only. It has launched as UMTS, and reports from various sources are reporting that tethering has indeed proven that data is at 3G speed.

The current 3G phones on T-Mobile do not allow the ‘3G’ icon to display. The only way to tell if you are using 3G, is to tether your device and fire up a speed test. EDGE is only capable of 236kbps in the current form, so anything greater than that, you are on the UMTS network. Though right now the launch is UMTS, it is suggested that since T-Mobile’s equipment is HSDPA capable, they will upgrade soon.

“T-Mobile will be the first US operator to deploy the fully HSDPA capable Nokia Flexi WCDMA Base Station. The small and modular design of the Nokia Flexi WCDMA Base Station enables easy deployment of WCDMA 3G in multiple spectrum bands with significantly lower base station site expenditures and also gives an easy upgrade path to HSDPA for the future.” -mobilecomms-technology.com

This is all very exciting news, and it is even more exciting when you hear how much spectrum they have at their disposal. Between both AWS bands, at 1700MHz uplink and 2100MHz downlink, T-Mobile has an average spectrum depth of 60MHz in any given market. All this means, do not expect any capacity issues. Are you rocking the 3G? Let us know in the comments.

[Via Darla Mack]