It was already known that T-Mobile planned to nurse HSPA+ for as long as possible, and that their fourth generation wireless broadband plans were murky at best. Rene Obermann, CEO of T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom, says the company won’t even consider making a move on LTE for at least two years. According to Obermann, the company isn’t worried that they’ll lag LTE efforts by Verizon and AT&T, who’ll both have deployments underway by that time. Says Obermann:

“We’ll get a fourth-generation wireless network either by buying spectrum or re-farming existing spectrum, or potentially leasing spectrum together with others. I don’t think we’ll trail others in the next two years. With HSPA+ we’re in a very good position. We still have plenty of capacity, so we are competitive” said Obermann.

T-Mobile does have some time (but not a lot) to dilly dally as they consider their next move. The company’s current upgrades allow theoretical downstream speeds of up to 20 Mbps, and there have been rumors they’ll try to push HSPA+ towards 40 Mbps down the line. While Verizon plans to offer 4G services by the end of this year, their LTE deployment will be initially capped at 5-12 Mbps downstream. AT&T meanwhile is taking their time on the shift to LTE, and like T-Mobile is nursing HSPA+, albeit less aggressively.

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There’s been a flurry of rumors lately surrounding T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom, and their desire to improve T-Mobile’s fourth-place fortunes in the U.S. wireless market. Rumors recently suggested that Deutsche Telekom wanted to buy Sprint and merge the company with T-Mobile, despite some headache-inducing technical and network integration differences. When that rumor was debunked, a new rumor surfaced saying that Deutsche Telekom wanted to partner with Clearwire, funding Clear deployment in exchange for access to spectrum. This week, insiders tell the German Handelsblatt newspaper that Deutsche Telekom is still looking for a U.S. network investment partner, and is in fact considering some kind of deal with AT&T, MetroPCS and/or Clearwire.

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