NYTimes on the future of T-Mobile USA

They didn't exactly say much about the situation as it stands that we really didn't know, but the New York Times published a piece this morning attempting to provide some context as to whether or not we can really expect Deutsche Telekom to sell off their T-Mobile USA division. True, we already heard that figure about them needing to invest another ten billion bills to upgrade to 3G in order to make their network a viable competitor (unless they want to stick to being voice-centric, that is), and that they're smaller than the other players by a good 50% or more (18.3m subs compared to say, Cingular's 50m), but word is they're the leanest around in operations costs, and more importantly, they're in the black. Whereas the Times doesn't stick the landing, we'll just say this: despite the rest, we've never known any company to sell off a functioning profit-center—at least not unless there was some serious behind the scenes motivation. So if DT is really considering getting rid of T-Mo, they must already be mulling over some pretty sweet offers, not sitting around discussing what to do, what to do.