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My HTC EVO 4g still stands by for days without recharging, and hasn't gotten a single damn update - security or otherwise - since around 2012. I only got a new phone last year because Sprint shut down the 4G WiMax signal it used in favor of 4G LTE.

Not buying a new phone every 2 years means no security patches.

T-Mobile is either done or nearly done with killing off 2G.

I believe you're mistaken (and thinking of AT&T). They're the ones getting ready to turn off 2G service. T-Mobile plans to keep it around a little longer. I'm using a 2G phone now with no issues. They should be hounding me to upgrade my handset if they are so interested in killing it off.

No offense, but I have to call BS on this:

These towers typically only have a T1 backhaul.

Well, It's true. They're starting to integrate into other assets, as Time Warner points out: Many cell phone providers are hooking cable modems up to their towers to boost speeds. Some towers, where regulations permit, and where sufficiently high enough to avoid a safety hazard, also use microwave links to nearby central offices. But the majority of towers being deployed only have a T1 or equivalent for the backhaul.

If I understand Verizon's network setup correctly, I'd guess that they're using at least something like a OC-3c.

Except you aren't. Parts of their network do, sure, but a lot of towers don't. And you don't seem to understand how these cells mesh together. Your cell phone can, in a typical urban environment, probably talk to over a dozen towers. But it doesn't. It usually talks to the nearest one; To keep transmitter power low and keep wireless "slots" free in adjacent cells. But there may only be 1 or 2 4G towers, but maybe 5 3G, or phone-only towers.. or whatever. My point is that it's a mixed environment. They can even have you talking on one tower while making a data connection on another, and all of this is being handed off all the time when you're mobile. Sometimes a tower oversaturates and hands traffic off to another one, or forces your phone to downgrade; It'll say 4G but it's only talking on 3G, for example.

b) By my calculations. I could blow through my 2 GB data allowance in under 36 minutes just by maxing out my down speed.

Yeah. Why do you think the data allowances are so low, while believing the network capacity to be so great? It strikes me as a big flaw in your line of reasoning.

it's a vast untapped market that could soon explode in numbers to the smart phone market.

You and Microsoft are about a year too late.

The latest research on global smartphone shipments shows that 42 million smartphones were shipped in China in the second quarter, versus 25 million in the United States. Chinese smartphone sales tripled last year, according to Canalys.

  Chinese vendors ZTE, Lenovo and Huawei all saw their smartphone sales increase by more than 100% in China last year. (Lenovo’s smartphone sales in China were up 2,665%.)

With Apple in fifth place in the Chinese smartphone market, Android is the country’s dominant operating system. Canalys says 81% of the smartphones shipped in China last quarter were Android phones.

http://www.rcrwireless.com/article/20120803/devices/smartphone-sales-surge-china/

The same EU that almost banned cordless phones and Wi-Fi in schools because of unsafe radiation?

I don't know why people are fixated on "Honeycomb" like it is somehow going to make a tablet more usable than Gingerbread. People at large don't really care about the OS. How many people are still running XP or basically switched only because it's been withdrawn from the market? Users care about applications and "ecosystem," not about an OS per se.

The problem with Android tablets, in a nutshell, is that they don't have a killer app yet. However, that may soon change.

But CDMA is gaining market share fast, 33% increase in number of countries with CDMA. According to http://www.rcrwireless.com/ARTICLE/20100709/CUSTOMERS/100709962/-global-cdma-forum-how-one-dutch-carrier-is-using-cdma450-for-m2m the Dutch are getting a CDMA network because it is stale technology.

Also, some cell companies (such as AT&T) use the technology you mention, others do not have the capacity and instead use GPS. They were given the option, and they went various ways. Both have drawbacks: what if GPS doesn't have a signal? OR: What if you can only see one or two towers?

I always saw the early E911 location requirements as a bunch of bureaucratic wishful thinking and I guess a lot of phone companies had the same response since they have been suing the FCC over it. GPS reliability when indoors or under cover is poor enough with even dedicated receivers that I always figured a hybrid system would be necessary if only because phone ergonomics compromise GPS antenna design.

As far as the E911 GPS location requirements, the FCC would have been better off with a real world empirical benchmark. Then they would have discovered what they were asking for did not exist when they could not duplicate it.

Verizon's already got that covered. Don't worry about it.