i don't get really get hotspot at home. my phone has wifi, and the tmobile guy said that i can make calls from anywhere with wifi--not just hotspot@home. so i don't really get the point of hotspot@home because soon probably all phones will have wifi that will work anywhere.

I have tmo, and as soon I get in my apto, I lose all reception on my phone. the device has to be placed literally hanging on the window, suspended so I get enough signal for me to make and receive calls. At the begining i had to use the wired headset that came with the phone and now I use a BTooth device. Paying the $20 dollars more a month and using a wifi phone (I would need to upgrade because my phone is 2 years old) I should be able to use it losing no reception and being able to walk from my room to the kitchen without any problem.

Im wondering if my solution is more one of those thinkgeek.com signal extenders

@vanka: Not that I'm sold on it, but hotspot@home is setup so that your phone automatically switches between WiFi and cell usage (even during a call), with a preference for WiFi since it's cheaper for them and you. Your WiFi enabled phone, like mine, isn't 'hotspot@home qualified' because it doesn't have that programming. We have to load VOIP software, find a WiFi spot we have access to, and initiate the WiFi call, which cannot be switched over to a cell call should we want to.

So, who wants to write the programming to fix this so we don't have to get a special hotspot@home service?

I love the hotspot service in theory, but I've had lots of problems with my BB Curve dropping the calls when the voip data stream hangs. I think the system is set up so that the call would transfer seamlessly to the cell network, but instead it seems to always drop my call. As a result, I've had to disable wi-fi on my blackberry. I hope they get things figured out soon.

@vanka: Hotspot at home is a service in which you get unlimited minutes from your home wi-fi network. I think, however, the system doesn't know the difference between home network and other networks, so it is basically an unlimited voip plan on top of your normal cell minutes. You can use your cell over wi-fi even without the hotspot add on, you just don't get free minutes.

@schwnj: it could be a good way for tmobile to make money off of people who don't know that they can use ANY wifi network, not just their hotspot@home service.

@schwnj: also the guy told me i could use wifi abroad to call america for free without this plan, but maybe this is just blackberry with the unlimited international addon i have.

That was, without a doubt, the WORST metaphor I have ever heard. You and your English teachers past and present should be ashamed.

@vanka: ok nevermind i'm stupid i get it now... the wifi talk time uses up regular minutes if you don't have this extra 20$ feature. i need to go to bed now.

true you can use any wifi access points but in order for the system to recognize you, you have to have the "@home" service provisioned on your account. Otherwise even though you have wifi access you will not be able to make a call through wifi

two things to clear up....
the $20 service fee is not needed to use the UMA feature aka voip
the $20 service includes unlimited calling in wifi areas

also
uma is down because of the flooding n has been up for 2 days straight without problems as i use the service n work for tmobile.

But it was down for a couple of days because of the flooding and the backup servers not reliable enough to handle all the @home phones.

With all the @home phones we now offer there is a mile selection for every user and for those of you who have the dash/wing/mda/shadow One day one of you will fix this problem with windows mobile 6 not using uma technology.

Either way buy T-mobile it pays my bill! jk but seriously what other company offers this kind of technology ?

I hate my job. Seriously.

@exdirrk: cincinnati bell rolled out their "home run" service before t-mobile released this.

@exdirrk:
Cingular looked at this service, and shot it down due to the necessity of a specifically provisioned WIFI node (the at home server thing) due to e911 requirements. that's why you can't just use it with any wifi connection. or you can, you just have to re-provision it everytime.

@drewheyman:

that being said, i think it is a cool service, and will only get better as technology advances. T-Mobile probably made the right decision to roll it out.

Our company was trying to sell a Wifi router to T-Mobile for this service and we tested it with their phones. With a good Wifi signal, the phone would switch over to the GSM network from Wifi about once or twice every 30 minutes. It takes about a minute or so for it to switch back. We found the reason was that the T-Mobile headend would stop responding to packets from the phone. We mentioned this to T-Mobile, but they weren't real interested in hearing about anything that was a problem on their end. If you don't have a good GSM signal, this would result in a dropped call.

The chick in the picture for this article is really hot.

As for Hotspot@Home, I thought about it until I moved in to a nicer place. Less metal in the walls means the whole apartment doesn't act as a Faraday cage. Now I get cell reception and my guitar amp doesn't buzz.

The service works 70% of the time. I was getting dropped calls every 5 minutes on the wifi. I have two routers, an N1 and a G from t-mobile. Both give same results. I use cox cable as my provider and had to upgrade to their premier package to get the fastest upload speed. The main problem is that if you get too much jitter from your internet provider, it will drop your calls. The first month I had the service it worked flawlessly. Since the outage, I have gotten a replacelemt phone, a new sim card adn a new router and it is marginal service at best. Best thing is to wait until t-moblie or a competitor builds a more reliable system...

The only problem I have is about 50% of the time, the phone does not automatically connect to the wireless network. When this occurs manual connection also fails and the only solution is to remove and reinsert the battery. Very annoying. T-Mobile offers no other solution and does not recognize the problem on their web site.
I use at-home because our home has lathe and plaster walls, i.e., a great deal of steel mesh in the walls. Verizon worked fairly well but had no coverage at my office. T-mobile works very well in the house but only with the wi-fi at home. It gives me excellent signal at the office, inside a metal building. Small problems are occasional dropped calls and poor reception when I am within 2 feet of my computer. With T-Mobile but without wi-fi, I have no coverage inside my home and weak signal outside the house and I live in the middle of Houston. With WiFi and with 2 extenders, one on each floor, the signal is good now. As I said, the only problem is not automatically connecting.