JC - Technology and Stuff

So, I apologize in advance. This post may appear as a piece of sponsored advertising for T-Mobile. I do indeed work for T-Mobile, but even if I didn’t this wonderful piece of equipment and marketing would still get my vote. What am I talking about? T-Mobile @Home.

Let’s start with the basics. What is T-Mobile @Home? Well, it’s a wireless router that connects to your broadband network at home, that you can plug a normal wireline (you know those large old fashioned phones that stay in the apartment or home) phone into. The router will set you back $49.99 (currrent pricing) and the service will cost you $9.99 a month (current pricing) with a two year contract. For that you get unlimited national coast to coast calling and a shiny new wireless G router that will connect to your current setup (and I know ‘cos I’ve done it). There are a few other bonuses too, but we’ll get to those. First off let me tell you my experience.

We employees at T-Mobile had to wait for the national launch of the @Home service before we could get one of these beasts. The service had already been released to the Seattle and Denver markets a few months previously and I spent those months eagerly waiting my turn to eat my own dogfood. I previously used Vonage for my service and although I had no complaints about the service (after all I had been using it for nearly 3 years) I was eager to switch to @Home (besides which Vonage was charging $24.99 a month for the same unlimited plan). So, on the second day after the launch (I was on vacation on the first day) I signed on online at the special T-Mobile site and placed my order for the service. Then I waited. I was so impatient that for once I wished it was possible to go to the T-Mobile store like an ordinary customer! Well, I placed my order on the Monday and on Thursday my router arrived. Pretty quick! I unpacked it, stared at it, read all the instructions and tried to stay calm. There were big stickers over everything that warned to run the CD before you connected anything or turned anything on. I had to believe T-Mobile meant it too as there were literally stickers and instructions on everything. So, I had a think and decided how I should connect this thing up in my apartment. I have a Verizon DSL connection at present that gives me 1.5mbs of speed (yes I know I can get 6mbs from Comcast - I just haven’t gone there yet), and the DSL connection comes in from the wall and gets plugged to a Verizon wireless G router with 4 ethernet ports on it. My Vonage box was connected off that and also a 4 port ethernet switch was wired and attached about 30 feet away that connected up my server, desktop, network printer and network storage. I had two options. I could connect the T-Mobile router in place of the Vonage box and use my home phone off that, or I could replace my ethernet switch with the T-Mobile router and run all my networked devices off the new router. I decided for the latter option. It involved more work in setting things up as I had to unplug and replug all my equipment and also I couldn’t perform the swap out until halfway through the install process because of the warnings on the @Home materials but nonetheless I went ahead and took the plunge knowing that at some point I would be without an Internet or network connection on my main PC.

The install was extremely painless and at the appropriate time I hooked up the router, plugged in all the cables and my network and Internet connection sprang into life. Oh and by the way, halfway through the install you have to insert a SIM card (just like SIM cards that are inside mobile phones) that you also receive with the kit, into the router. This SIM card will be what makes your home phone work. So, I had followed all the instructions, set up my router, plugged my home phone into one of the two ports for the phone, gone to the router’s admin page and set it up for everything and thought my work was done. Hmm, only one little thing. No dial tone on my home phone. Alas there was also no blue light on my router where the phone was connected like there was supposed to be. Not to worry, I could call T-Mobile customer care from my mobile phone and troubleshoot the problem. It turned out that I hadn’t actually been assigned a number for my home phone yet. There had been such a rush of T-mobilites requesting these little beasties that the delivery had gotten ahead of the provisioning. Still, I was assured that my phone ‘would be working in a few days’. Hmm (I’m always slightly dubious when I hear these reassuring words from a support department).

Still, in the meantime there were some other things I could and needed to do with my router. First things first I turned off the wireless signal from my original Verizon router and set up the wireless signal on the T-Mobile router. The reason for this was I wanted all my network traffic to go through this router. Why? Because the T-Mobile @Home router has call (VOIP) prioritization built in. This is a wonderful feature and it means that when you are using your phone on the router the service will get priority over other Internet traffic. This is a good thing - trust me! Secondly, I wanted to set up my mobile phone to use the new T-Mobile router. What do I mean by that? Well I have a Blackberry Curve that has WiFi built in and clever T-Mobile has enabled it so that it can connect to wireless networks and use VOIP wherever possible too. Whenever my mobile phone is connected using WiFi it costs me zero minutes - now that’s a good feature! And of course as the T-Mobile router is optimized for VOIP then I wanted my mobile phone to connect to that too. My wife’s phone also has WiFi and so when she got home from work I set hers up to work with the router too. And in case you’re asking why I would do this it’s because as we all know, mobile phones work brilliantly except at home where they always manage to find a dead spot somewhere in the house. When you’re connected via WiFi this problem goes away!

I’ll take a little detour here too, in case you’re not familiar with phones that are WiFi enabled. With mobile phones in normal use when you are out and about you will use your provider’s airwaves (network) for both your phone calls and Internet requests, but when you are attached to a wireless network (think T-Mobile Hotspot) your phone will use that network instead of the airwaves for its calls (actually not all providers are like T-Mobile and so sometimes only your Internet requests and not your actual phone calls will use the wireless network). Anyway, within a few minutes I was cooking on gas and my mobile phone seamlessly connected to my home network and was ready to receive and make calls using my broadband connection. Sweet (by the way, my mobile phone also connects automatically to T-Mobile Hotspot connections all over  - like at Starbucks - whenever it can).

Anyway, back to the plot. I still didn’t actually have my home phone working on my router. Then, a few days later I received an email saying my home phone was now provisioned and the email contained my new home number (by the way you can port your existing number too if you want to). I was at work at the time but I thought to myself there was no harm in trying. I mean, what was the worst thing that could happen? What am I talking about? I dialed the number T-Mobile had sent me of course! And my wife answered the phone! Sweet! That’s what you call an easy setup.

So now I have a great new VOIP optimized wireless G router AND a landline equivalent with unlimited national calling. Like I said at the beginning, even if I wasn’t a T-Mobile employee I would have happily spent the $49.99 equipment (once off) and $9.99 a month fees for this service. Quite frankly this is something that Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and all the others can’t match. After all, why would they want you to give up your expensive home phone for a cheaper model?

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Technology, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.