Daniel, reread my first post. No proxies. Everything is done through internet2.voicestream.com which has all of its ports open (except real player's I think). Regardless, its not a port nor proxy issue. The issue has to do with T-mobile and their screwy network. Apparently the issue is NOT networkwide but affects most of the east coast. Apparently alls well on the west.

I had issues with my laptop (12" powerbook) connecting to the T-mobile until I ran these 2 things:

In order to alleviate problems with Google Gmail, change the MTU settings with this small patch http://mcleay.dyndns.org/osx/

Use Unlockupd http://www.dshadow.com/software/unlockupd/, which works around a bug in Mac OS X's lookupd (a system daemon that provides networking routines and performs other functions). Apparently the T-Mobile connection is prone to triggering this bug.