Last Thursday T-Mobile USA quietly (tough not to be quiet with all the iPhone buzz) announced the national roll out of their UMA based HotSpot@Home service. Unfortunately they are not currently providing a radio stack for Windows Mobile devices, even though Microsoft and BT announced the availability of a Windows Mobile UMA compatible device in early 2007. All T-Mobile Windows Mobile users, please call customer support (611) to request the feature. Maybe this will prod T-Mobile...
I looks the company behind the UMA software used by T-Mobile and BT is called Kineto. Wireless. Here is a diagram (courtesy of Kineto Wireless) depicting how UMA works.
The Kineto Wireless UMA diagram (link to larger diagram).
Last week I received a promotional email from T-Mobile which is currently offering the service for $9.99 a month or $19.99 for a family plan. This is a great deal. I have always viewed this technology as the holy grail of telephony convergence; one phone, one number and cheap VOIP calls. I had to try it.
Currently, T-Mobile has two UMA compatible phones. the Nokia 6086 and Samsung t409. Both range from $49.99 to $179.99 based on contract terms. Although you can use your own home router, T-Mobile provides two routers (D-Link and Linksys) with enhanced UMA functionality. They are currently free with a $50 mail in rebate. I opted for the Samsung t409 which is tri band vs the Nokia quad band, but I have heard that the Samsung pulls in a stronger signals. I also chose the Linksys WRT54G-TM router even though I already own Linksys Access Points (for free you can't pass it up).
For novice users the setup is actually very simple. A wizard on your PC will setup the router and a wizard on the phone will setup the WIFI link to the router. Once the WIFI link is setup it works magically. I made a call in my family room using WIFI, walked out to the back of my yard, the call was handed off to the cell network seamlessly. The technology is amazing and it works. Everybody is buzzing about the innovation of the iPhone, but I think this technology has the opportunity to revolutionize the way we use cell phones. Today, only a fragment of the population use cell phones as their primary phone. UMA can change that, this is the true beginning of the death of the Plain Old Telephone System (POTS or land line). I think this is a great play for T-Mobile. As a $9.99 add on it allows them to compete head on with the Triple play bundling ($33 x 3 phone, cable, internet) from the cable and phone companies.
On the router front, I tried both my Linksys Access Point and the Linksys/T-Mobile Router. The sound quality on the Linksys/T-Mobile Router is noticeably better, so I replaced one of my Access Point for the router.
In the upper left hand corner of the display, a blue dot with red signal strength bars along with the SSID name of the WIFI network are displayed to let you know that you are connected via HotSpot@Home. The default WIFI SSID network name is @HomeXXXX, XXXX are the four last hexadecimal numbers in the router's MAC address. I changed it to match the SSID I use with my other Access Points (AP) around the house. The phone does not seem to want to roam from router to AP, so I may have to purchase another Linksys/T-Mobile router to ensure I have adequate coverage throughout the entire house. I also turned off the firewall and DHCP on the router, since my D-Link DFL-210 performs those functions.
The cellular signal strength along with the carrier is displayed when you are connected to the cellular network.
The family has now used the phone for 2 and 1/2 days and 81 minutes. Everyone is impressed with the sound quality. My wife is even thinking of dumping her Razor for the flexibility of using one phone. She currently uses our Sunrocket VOIP line to make outgoing calls from home to save our minutes.
The only thing that is missing is a VOIP adapter that would allow us to use the telephone sets around the house...With Bluetooth we could use our Phone Labs Dock-N-Talk, however it is an early version and the sound quality is just ok. Phonelabs has upgraded their firmware, I will check to see if I can get an upgrade.
Next up testing at Starbucks with T-Mobile HotSpot...
I just spoke to T-Mobile. Apparently since I just extended my contract a few weeks ago to get the Wing I'm not eligible for another contract extension, so both phones would be $169 and then the router for $50 minus the $50 rebate. I place a lot of international calls at home, so I had hoped that they would have better rates on international calls through WiFi, however they told me international rates are the same as if I were making calls through normal GSM service, so unfortunately the service isn't interesting to me, since the $169 would blow any potential savings in national calls... I did, however, request for WiFi support for the Wing and the rep said they have been getting a lot of inquiries for that, but she said T-Mobile's plan is to issue new Wings with Wifi@home support, not just a software/ROM upgrade. I find that hard to believe, but didn't want to get into a discussion over that. So I guess I'll just wait and see...
Posted by: Chris | July 05, 2007 at 09:35 PM
Yes, unfortunately the service only provides free US calls. The best bet for free European calls seems to be Vonage which allows unlimited calls to a select set of European countries.
I am investigating the HotSpot@home upgrade, it does look like the Wing has the appropriate TI chipset so all that would be needed is a radio stack upgrade.
Posted by: Stephen Skarlatos | July 06, 2007 at 08:15 AM
If the wing has the right chipset does that mean the MDA vario (HTC Wizard) would also be eligible for a radio stack upgrade for uma?
Posted by: Rudi | July 06, 2007 at 10:56 AM