AT&T is letting slip more details of their post-acquisition plans for T-Mobile as time goes on. Up on offer this evening is the degree to which T-Mobile's spectrum will be used for AT&T's 4G LTE network. The long and short of it is, that T-Mobile customers with 3G phones will need to replace those handsets in order to continue receiving data after the deal is done.

You may remember early last summer when the brand new iPad 3G ended up being a bit of an embarrassment for AT&T thanks to a security exploit. Some industrious hackers managed to use a brute force attack to extract user email addresses and names. Now, Reuters is reporting that Daniel Spitler and Andrew Auernheimer have been arrested and charged with perpetrating the attack. Auernheimer was previously arrested on an unrelated drug charge.

These shady folks created a hacking tool that masqueraded as 3G iPad, and queries AT&T's servers with random ICC numbers. When a number turned out to be valid, the AT&T servers would autofill the corresponding user's real email address and name. The security hole was blamed on a feature AT&T said was included to make log-ins more convenient for users. The hack exposed the information of high-profile politicians, business execs, and journalists. It's no surprise arrests have been the result.

Both defendants were charged with one count of fraud and one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization. If convicted, each charge could net the accused five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

A joint statement today from Nokia Siemens and T-Mobile USA offered up some details on the new Long Term HSPA Evolution cellular data standard. The technology should be ready for commercial deployment sometime in 2013. It should be pointed out that these are theoretical maximum speeds. By the time this technology is deployed, it will be competing with LTE 4G networks from AT&T and Verizon. The current generation of LTE has a maximum downlink speed of 400Mbps, so Long Term HSPA Evolution could have a chance.

T-Mobile certainly has a stake in this. The smallest US carrier has not yet announced its plans for a new network technology. Long Term HSPA Evolution is an enhanced 3G technology that is backwards compatible with the current HSPA networks. It's a perfect fit for T-Mobile, as they continue their rollout of 21Mbps HSPA+. If Long Term HSPA Evolution was used, it would take another generation of LTE for Verizon or AT&T to catch up in speed.

The real concern is that a technology needs to be widely adopted to encourage manufacturers to build phones around it. T-Mobile is already hurt by having an odd 1700MHz 3G frequency, using a completely different technology than other North American carriers won't do wonders either.