I guess the comparisons to other 3G data plans, not to mention collective complaining around the web, have reached T-Mobile’s ears. Saul Hansell just got word from T-Mo: they’re hanging up on the measly one gigabyte bandwidth cap for the new Android handset. Here’s the important bit of the official statement they provided to him:

“We removed the 1GB soft limit from our policy statement, and we are confident that T-Mobile G1 customers will enjoy the high speed of data access over our 3G network. The specific terms for our new data plans are still being reviewed and once they are final we will be certain to share this broadly with current customers and potential new customers.”

This move is smart and sadly, shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place. If you’re going to compete in the market with a comparable service you need to offer comparable service (or better), which these days is around 5 GB. Aside from that, you’re also talking about a network that’s not stressing out over use because it just launched. I’m sure there’s a few pockets of packets in use by people with Sony Ericsson TM506, but I seriously doubt they’re sucking the data pipes dry. And all that talk about the phone not synching with a desktop or laptop? Isn’t the device by definition heavily reliant on its data connection?My only remaining concern about the data usage now revolves around other potential restrictions that could be added as a result of this concession. There may be truly unlimited data but might the carrier restrict high-bandwidth activities like video streaming for example, to help manage the quality of the network availability?