A few days ago, Operation Gadget pointed out that T-Mobile USA will not roll out high speed wireless data services for about two years. This flies in the face of strategies being pursued by competitors Verizon, Cingular, and Sprint PCS who are each commiting major resources to a deployment effort.

An article in The New York Times today suggests that their may be a method in T-Mobile's madness. Ken Belson wrote an article that says virtually all U.S. mobile phone users use their phones primarily or exclusively for voice calls. Evidence of this includes the fact that mobile data services represent only 4.7 percent of revenue for American carriers, and that the hottest phone on the market today is the Motorola RAZR V3, primarily known for its sharp design not its data capabilities.

Many readers of sites like this one are early adopters of mobile data services. We build little applications that send data to us via SMS, build WAP versions of our websites, forward our email to our BlackBerries, and generally push the envelope a lot compared to the typical American mobile phone user.

Most Americans commute in a car and can't safely use wireless data services, even if they wanted to. They often time shift their calls to family members so that they take place during commuting time. This is why all the mobile billing plans that you see advertised emphasize talk time over everything else.

None of us should be surprised by these findings, but we should note that those of us who already use wireless data services are using them at an increasing rate.