T-Mobile Turns 10: A Peek into the Device Lab

T-Mobile celebrated the decade mark Wednesday by launching an unlimited 4G plan for consumers and allowing the media a peek into its device lab in Bellevue, where mobile devices are abused in the name of science and customer service.

The company almost didn't make this milestone under the T-Mobile name and its familar pink and black logo. Last year, AT&T and T-Mobile USA's parent company Deutsche Telekom . However, , .

After the merger attempt broke down, T-Mobile announced heavy investments into its wireless network. The company earlier announced a .

Brad Duea, the company's senior vice president, product management in a prepared statement, said that the move to offer unlimited 4G is in response to the demands of younger consumers -- those in their teens through early 30s --  who use their smart phone devices to watch bandwidth-heavy video.

Duea said that other smart phone users are nervous about using all their bandwidth, and never use some of the video-heavy apps.

The company's upgrades to its network later this year will allow for customers with iPhones to move their plans to T-Mobile's unlimited 4G plan, said David Mayo, senior vice president of technology strategy, finance and development for T-Mobile USA.

Mayo said that there are no plans to offer the iPhone for sale because T-Mobile has not yet reached an agreement with Apple, though T-Mobile is open to the possibility.

Device Lab

All phones and tablets are put through the paces in the company's Device Lab, where devices are dropped from a height of a meter, tumbled, rotated, rained on, heated and otherwise abused in order to test their durability in the real world.

Among the tests in the Device Lab is Mr. Hats, which tests telephone conversations in noisy situations, and Tappy, a robot designed by T-Mobile to simulate three weeks of use in a 72-hour period.

A few devices have failed the tests, which can run 30 to 90 days, and those aren't sold by T-Mobile, said Kathy Barnes, a senior director at T-Mobile who leads the Engineering Quality Assurance and Device Technology teams. But, most of the time, the company works with the phone suppliers to fix the problem if problems are discovered during the testing.

History

The company began as Western Wireless in 1994 in a merger of General Cellular and Pacific Northwest Cellular. After a public offering, Western Wireless became VoiceStream Wireless, which grew to 7 million customers, according to the company history.

In 2001, the Bellevue-based company was acquired by Deutsche Telekom AG,  a telecommunications company based in Bonn, Germany, in 2001, and was rebranded as T-Mobile USA the following year.

T-Mobile started offering the BlackBerry smartphone with email and phone service in 2002 --the first year the device was marketed-- and the company also spread its reach through Internet access for its customers at Borders and more than 100 airports throughout the country. National ads for the company featured at different times Jamie Lee Curtis and Catherine Zeta Jones.

The company today has 33.2 million customers and employs about 4,000 people in the Seattle area, according to the company.