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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.
Yeah, but how exactly is it a mesh?
Why should people pay extra for this? It seems like it should save T-Mobile money by reducing the load on their cell towers (allowing them to reduce their infrastructure costs).
And what about the consumer who isn't short on minutes? Why not offer an option to use it without an extra charge, but still charge minutes?
That is as long as no one points out how it's interesting that Steve Jobs and the head of AT&T were talking about doing VOIP on the iPhone in the eventual future (it's in one of their interviews). Which would then lead to a conversation how this very well could be the eventual future of all cell phones.
Don't worry, though, to save your sanity, I won't mention it.
The biggest problem with mobile wifi is hand offs. It's been a while since I've looked into the issue, I know there were a couple of MIT guys working on millisecond hand off from one hotspot to the next a year or two ago, but the power consumption was huge.
Cellphones don't have to handle hand offs, the towers do all the work. I had a job doing a lot of testing of call hand offs a few years back. You literally drive back and forth between a few towers, or in a bad hand off area (especially around lakes) and work on programming the towers as to when they should hand calls off to another tower based on vector, signal strength, and a tower list. The whole thing is dynamic too, so weather changes, call volume, new construction, etc... can all be handled at least in the short term with out further work.
I know Sysco has some really cool auto-meshing technology that makes their routers talk to each other and adjust signal strength to pick up for downed antennas, but that technology would have to mature a lot to get the same kind of hand off performance as cell phones enjoy.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
What do you think the $10 a month is for? T-Mobile is basically signing you up for a subscription to their WiFi service. Which is probably cheaper to run than the cell service. So T-Mobile gets you to sign up for cell service AND WiFi, then gets you to use less of the expensive GSM airtime and more of the inexpensive WiFi time. Voila, T-Mobile profits.
Quite a nifty scheme, actually.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Yes, GSM will hand off to Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi will hand off to GSM. The billing is based on where the call originates however. That means when you get home and come in range of your wi-fi, to get the unlimited calling rates, you would need to hang up, and then reconnect the call from wi-fi. However if you walk down the street and accidentaly leave your wi-fi area, it works the other way, the call will be free untill you disconnect and make a new call.
I can attest, it changes over from VoIP to cellular tower seamlessly, with no noticeable change.
I start my calls while standing or parked next to a Starbuck's, drive off, and the entire call is free.