It's starting to sound like a broken record, and for American carriers, that's a good thing: there are plenty of new subscribers hopping on board, and they're doing more mobile browsing than ever before. T-Mobile added about 668,000 net subscribers in the second quarter -- down from nearly a million in the first, but hey, net new subs are a good thing any way you look at it. Those adds now put T-Mobile at about 31.5 million customers in total, a distant fourth behind AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint (less than half of either AT&T's or Verizon's base, in fact). As number one and number two both reported, there's been a huge jump in data revenue year over year -- 31.5 percent, to be exact, with much of the cash flowing from messaging services. Feeling a little left out of the new subscriber party here, Sprint?

We're still trying to figure out exactly how Nokia intends to position the N85 slider in its Nseries lineup, and frankly, the FCC documentation that's been outed for it isn't helping much. Seems there are two versions of the thing: one with no 3G -- likely for China -- and another with WCDMA on the 900, 1900, and 2100MHz frequencies. That little dose of 1900 in there will be enough to give owners partial access to 3G while out 'n about in the colonies, but by and large, the phone appears destined for Europe where 2100 (and to a lesser extent, 900) is the name of the game. Both do quadband EDGE, so at the very least, you'll be able to roam the better part of the globe and get some semblance of coverage -- just don't expect it to be particularly speedy everywhere you go. To be fair, Espoo's been getting pretty good about crafting special versions of its hottest handsets that are ripe for North American use, so we're not giving up hope just yet that there's a third version floating out there.

[Via Cell Phone Signal]

Rogers' in-home WiFi calling service -- think T-Mobile's HotSpot @Home but with more polar bears, poutine, and curling -- never had the most elegant name. "Home Calling Zone" just doesn't roll off the tongue in the way that any marketing department-friendly brand should (not to suggest that "HotSpot @Home" does), and Rogers has acted swiftly to rectify its faux pas by rebranding the service simply "Talkspot." The features and pricing remain the same, as does the two-strong lineup of the BlackBerry Pearl and Nokia 6086, but at least customers will now enjoy a slightly less-awkward experience trying to describe the service to their friends and family.

[Via MobileSyrup]

For better or worse, it turns out GSM networks aren't the only ones to enjoy the BlackBerry Curve in a decidedly pale shade of red. The pink Curve 8330 has now been confirmed for Verizon, with sales starting as soon as this Friday for $99.99 after rebate on a two-year contract. We still want that mythical near-black version that Sprint had originally showed off, but this has to be a close second. Or third. Or definitely in the top five.

Gotta be a lot of pressure out there in Mountain View lately, what with the LiMo Foundation's 20-plus shipping handsets, 50-plus members, and seemingly no shortage of momentum heading into the second half of the year. Despite all that, though, Android's Eric Chu says that it still has no interest in exploring a partnership with that other 800-pound mobile Linux consortium out there, primarily because it doesn't want too many cooks in the kitchen while it puts the finishing touches on its user experience. Speaking of finishing touches, Chu says that the core platform is now roughly 80 percent complete and still expects it to be open-sourced and delivered on production handsets by the end of the year. By then, LiMo could very well have another round or two of phones on the market -- and with the Symbian threat as real as ever, Google certainly may not be sitting as pretty as they seemed to be way back at the announcement.

[Via mocoNews]

How does that saying go? For every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction, right? Well, to that end, Sprint seems to be the "equal and opposite reaction" to AT&T's and Verizon's actions, posting a net subscriber loss and a stable ARPU at a time when its competitors are posting huge net adds and rising ARPUs. Year over year, The Now Network has hemorrhaged 2.1 million customers, 901,000 of whom bolted in this quarter alone in a $344 million vat of red ink; what's worse, it says losses will increase in the next due to a "seasonal uptick in churn." That doesn't really compute, unless Sprint is actively suggesting that people are more likely to leave its network in the third quarter of the year -- but we obviously understand the need to come up with interesting and creative excuses for bad news when it comes to an ugly earnings report. Any way you slice it, the big boys seem to be eating Sprint's lunch at the moment without a clear-cut path to turning the tables. The silver lining, we guess, is that analysts had expected 906,000 customers to bolt, a full 5,000 more than actually left -- but unless those 5,000 are each holding $1 million-per-month accounts, there's not much of a diff there.

[Via mocoNews]

Carriers like Tracfone and AT&T have set some serious precedents in the past couple years, sending warning shots over the bows of so-called prepaid phone traffickers who make pretty serious businesses out of buying prepaid phones in bulk, unlocking them (thereby nullifying the cash the carrier puts on the table to get the phone to market at a lower price), and reselling them to the highest bidders. T-Mobile USA has gotten on the action now, too, picking up a pair of permanent injunctions against Fone Xchange and ASPAC -- two of the biggest offenders in T-Mobile's eyes -- and a $6.5 million award for its troubles. Seems these guys won't take "no" for an answer, though, with T-Mobile also announcing that another gentleman violating a similar injunction awarded in Houston has been convicted of criminal contempt of court and is due to meet his steel-barred fate on October 10. So yeah, might want to settle down with those six-phone purchases from CVS there, bucko.

We were secretly (or not so secretly) hoping there'd been some crossed signals in the rumors that Telus would be launching a version of the enV2 called the "KEYBO," but no, it's all very true. The Tae Bo Thibault KEYBO checks in at $49.99 CAD (about $48) on a three-year contract, offering EV-DO, GPS, a 2 megapixel camera, and of course the series' claim to fame, a flip top that reveals a second display with a dedicated QWERTY keyboard for extreme texting action. Enjoy trying to say "KEYBO" without giggling, Canadians. We dare you.

[Via MobileSyrup]

So when exactly is the Touch Pro launching? Unless you're in the UK, we can't answer that with terribly high certainty -- but yeah, you Brits now have a target window to start saving for. Vodafone's online business shop says that HTC's mightiest QWERTY handset is "expected" in August, and while we admit that they could simply be airing out their wishful thinking on their product pages, it'd be awfully poor form to do so. Instead, we suspect HTC and Voda are on the hotline with one another here, and we'd give the window some weight. Now, if any other carriers would care to chime in with their own windows -- preferably in August -- we wouldn't try to stop you.

[Via CoolSmartPhone]

In the wake of Verizon's acquisition of Rural Cellular, something very interesting, unexpected, and delightful happened: AT&T finally found itself a way into Vermont. Long an AT&T-free zone, the merger of Verizon and Rural networks there stands to leave much of the state without any wireless competition, so the FCC's concession requirements demanded that the combined CDMA behemoth spin off a little bandwidth for AT&T's use. Of course, it's going to take a little time to get everything set up, but rest easy, Vermonters: that BlackJack II you've been desperately craving is nearly within reach.

[Via TUAW]

That crazy hybrid satellite / terrestrial mobile phone network being erected by start-up TerreStar just got a nice boost by signing a reciprocal roaming agreement with a rather sizable partner: a scrappy little carrier going by the name AT&T. Recent releases on TerreStar's site indicate that its first satellite won't be ready to launch until April of next year -- a bit of a delay from the end of 2008 estimate they'd been suggesting before -- but at least they'll be riding on the coattails of a nice, fat footprint on the ground when the time comes to flip the switch.

The deafening silence out of the Android camp as of late has left plenty of room for competitors to steal some of the spotlight to advance their own causes, and the LiMo Foundation certainly seems to be doing what it can to take advantage of the opportunity. The "other" Linux-based mobile platform already has a key advantage over Android and the Open Handset Alliance -- products that are actually shipping -- and they're working to wide the gap here by announcing that they've now pushed their member count over the half-century mark. As usual, there are a few heavy hitters in this round, too: ZTE, Motorola spinoff Freescale Semiconductor, and Telecom Italia headline the eleven-strong class of carriers, component manufacturers, and software shops. Separately, they've announced that 21 LiMo phones now grace the market, so it's looking like these guys are here to stay regardless of what the Android camp's up to.

We figure that you've already made ten jokes in your head by now after reading the headline -- you know, about how the phones come in thirty pieces, have diabolical names like "Kramfors," and look like they belong in dorm rooms -- so we're going to spare you and get straight to the point for a change of pace. The furniture empire's UK division has launched an MVNO on T-Mobile's backbone (not to be confused with those little Ikea Mobile kiosks in the US) that follows its sofa mantra to the letter: cheap and simple. It's a prepaid service that requires an initial £10 (about $20) investment, and if we had to guess, the phones themselves are probably about as basic as they come. Would we buy a Samsung "Ektorp"? Hell yeah, we would.

Colorware is now offering its usual array of services applied to the iPhone 3G, and we're happy to report that this abomination is a full $190 away from existing.

[Thanks, Nicky]

Moving just a tad downmarket from the mighty morphin' E8, Moto has rolled out three new members of its music-centric ROKR series today: the EM25 slider, EM28 flip, and EM30 candybar. The EM30 probably feels the most familiar, aping the E8's design language but trashing the touch-sensitive wheel for a plain ol' d-pad. It does, however, carry over the E8's so-called ModeShift morphing keypad and features an FM radio with RDS, 3.5mm headphone jack, and Windows Media compatibility. The EM28 brings the same style to a clamshell, while the EM25 reps the slider form factor. We're seeing some shots of a T-Mobile branded EM30 in here, too, so it looks like the carrier wants something to slot in right below the E8 in its Moto lineup -- a wise move, considering the E8's considerable expense. Look for the EM30 to launch first in Taiwan (sorry, T-Mob) followed by other markets later in the quarter, while the EM25 and EM28 should launch on a more global scale in the coming weeks.