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T-Mobile Announces WiFi Meshing Cellphone
tregetour writes with a link to a New York Times article penned by David Pogue about a quiet announcement last week by T-Mobile. It has nothing to do with the iPhone, but it could still be a welcome revolution for users plagued by high cellphone bills. "Here's the basic idea. If you're willing to pay $10 a month on top of a regular T-Mobile voice plan, you get a special cellphone. When you're out and about, it works like any other phone; calls eat up your monthly minutes as usual. But when it's in a Wi-Fi wireless Internet hot spot, this phone offers a huge bargain: all your calls are free. You use it and dial it the same as always — you still get call hold, caller ID, three-way calling and all the other features — but now your voice is carried by the Internet rather than the cellular airwaves." He goes on to explain further benefits of the system, and describes the wireless routers that the company will be pushing with the service. The only thing missing: an estimate of when it will hit stores.
Would hate to work for a fortune 500 company and be talking on this with a co-worker only to have the packets sniffed from some random server in Malaysia on a major pipeline.
Let me preface the rest by stating I work in T-Mobiles Operations and Engineering Department, and helped alpha test this device. =) When making a Wi-Fi call, the handset creates a GSM tunnel allowing it to maintain the same security used on any normal cellular call you make. So if you're still afraid of people tapping your calls, I recommend that you don't use a cell phone at all. No releasing it at the same time as the iphone doesn't seem like the best bet, however I'm not in marketing ;)
One of the major advantages of this over a normal wi-fi phone, is that it will hand over between GSM and Wi-Fi and maintain the call. No other Wi-Fi call provider can offer that at this time (AFAIK).
If you buy the phone but not the service, you can still use Wi-Fi but it will use your minutes as normal, the feature just give you unlimited Wi-Fi calls.
Will it make calls for T-Mobile cheaper to process? Maybe if enough people start picking it up, but there was an investment in time and added hardware to the network that would need to be paid off first. But in the long run, yes t-mobile should save money as people route calls over IP, however, this savings is passed on to the customer in that they can make all the calls they want for $10 a month. (It's up to the customer to decide if they will use it enough to warrant that cost)
Working for T-Mo I think this feature is great, but my opinion is of course biased.
You pay "extra" because T-Mobile still has to operate a voip server and route your call. But those of us who make lots of calls from an area with wifi coverage can save money by changing to a plan with far fewer minutes and adding the $10 wifi option.
This is an outstanding development if you use your cell as a primary line and you have wifi at home. I hope it delivers as promised!
As with anything technological, it seems to me, there's a 10% who explore and the rest settle for whatever is convenient and non-threatening. I'm interested in the 10%, because they'll forge the way for the rest............eventually.
technical writing / development
The underlying technology is most likely UMA : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlicensed_Mobile_Acc ess/
We've had offers based on this in Europe for over a year.
Very roughly speaking, this works by encapsulating GSM over IP+Wi-Fi. This is why handover between the GSM cell network and the Wi-Fi connection is possible at all : AFAIK, the phone still uses all the higher layers of GSM and the operator's usual servers on their GSM network. Your Wi-Fi access point is just another cell tower.
I personally see this technology as the "evil telecom world's" preferred way to add VoIP on a GSM phone (as opposed to the Internet world's plain old good SIP).
I'd much rather use a real GSM + SIP/Wi-Fi phone like my Nokia E65.
VoIP and GSM calls are perfectly integrated together, and using the SIP account associated with my landline (this is with the "Free" ISP in France), I can call and answer my home calls anywhere in the world exactly as if I were sitting in my sofa, and at the same rates, i.e. free for national calls and to around 30 countries