Thursday, January 07, 2010

T-Mobile USA Customers Not So Interested in Home Phone Service

It's a trend that continues to grow -- consumers are dropping their home phone or landline service. T-Mobile USA will be dropping active support for its @Home landline replacement service, according to a recent article by the Associated Press.

T-Mobile had launched this home phone service in July 2008 and had offered it for $10per month. The good news is that this does not impact the company's UMA-based @Home Wi-Fi calling service.

"The needs of our customers are constantly changing, and T-Mobile must foresee and adapt to these changes," T-Mobile said in a statement. "As such, T-Mobile plans to soon discontinue selling the T-Mobile@Home service; however, we will continue to support the service for customers who are @Home subscribers. No changes are anticipated in pricing of the service, nor will this decision impact the Wi-Fi calling (Unlimited HotSpot Calling) service."

The need for UMA to provide offload and improving coverage perseveres!

7 comments:

Nageshwar said...

Steve,

I believe you were mistaken.

The article in Fierce Wireless says T-Mobile is discontinuing @Home Service.

Ie., They do not plan to offer UMA service for new customers, which is rather unfortunate.

Steve said...

That's why we published the post, it is misleading. But I can confirm T-Mobile is not stopping it's UMA (Wi-Fi) service.

Robert said...

I never used @Home. Initially they had a big marketing push with it -- but that died off..
I use UMA on my Blackberry and Love it -- it's a key reason I don't leave T-Mobile for another carrier.
@Home would have made a great partner with say a Cable company that didn't offer their own (or even one that did) voice service...

djh said...

I have been having trouble finding a good UMA phone, other than the blackberries.

I have been with T-mobile since it was Omnipoint and have been using UMA since they started their hotspot @home service (predecessor to the @home service)

They seem to be de-emphasizing it quite a bit these days.

Unknown said...

No surprise. People will rather use SIP-agent on their mobile than UMA.

Steve said...

Interesting comment, but I'm not sure that's true.

A SIP client on a phone does something very different than UMA. UMA is your existing mobile service running over Wi-Fi, providing better coverage and potentially discounted calling.

A SIP client is *not* your standard mobile service. it's a new number and a new service. It's primarily used for cheap international calling. A SIP client does nothing to improve your coverage.

Note that SIP is a technology, the problem is what service does it entail. And if the service is cheap local calling, well, UMA does that really well.

Anonymous said...

come and show your support for the T-Mobile UMA fan page on facebook!! Let's hope they bring UMA to all Android phones!!1

http://www.facebook.com/pages/T-Mobile-USA-UMA-Wifi-Calling/152085804808866?ref=ts