Does T-Mobile Love WiFi More?

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, T-Mobile and Panasonic have teamed up on a digital camera in Panasonic’s LUMIX line that will allow users to upload photos directly to Google’s Picasa service from any T-Mobile HotSpot. The camera comes with 12-months of free HotSpot access, and that’s about all the information we’re given.

T-Mobile has made some pretty killer deals with their HotSpot service here in the U.S. recently. The Apple iTunes Store, available via WiFi on the iPod Touch and iPhone, is free at Starbucks in select cities. Starbucks uses T-Mobile’s HotSpot network. We’ve now also got this new Lumix camera using T-Mobile’s HotSpot service. Let’s also not forget T-Mobile’s recently launched @Home service, which allows compatible handsets to seamlessly transfer a call from the GSM network onto T-Mobile’s HotSpot WiFi network.

Seems to me that T-Mobile is doing an excellent job leveraging this massive WiFi network they’ve built. Perhaps this explains why they’ve taken their sweet time launching a 3G network.