Live Tour Coverage via T-Mobile in
Europe: T-Mobile is offering free streaming
video coverage of the Tour de France via
UMTS. [ Photo: T-Mobile International AG ]

Jonathan Maus pointed out that T-Mobile is offering live Tour de France TV reports to its customers via UMTS video streaming. This streaming video service is free to T-Mobile customers and available wherever T-Mobile offers UMTS.

Video streaming reportedly began on Stage 5 and will be available for all remaining stages of the Tour.

UMTS is a 2-Megabit-per-second 3G data service that is not yet available in the United States.

I'm not surprised that T-Mobile is offering state-of-the-art Tour de France coverage to its subscribers. What surprises me is that UMTS is rolled out widely enough in Germany to justify a large-scale promotion.

Meanwhile back in the United States, T-Mobile USA is holding off on upgrading its data network beyond GPRS. In What T-Mobile is Missing by Not Quickly Upgrading to EDGE, I pointed out that GPRS on T-Mobile USA reportedly tops out at 39.09 kilobits per second. If UMTS has an average dowload data rate of 220 to 320 kbps, GPRS has only 12 percent of UMTS' speed.

I thought T-Mobile customers were all supposed to "Get More". In this case, I guess you only get it if you live in Europe.

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