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T-Mobile's Hotspot @ Home – A Landline Alternative?

At first glance, T-Mobile’s Hotspot @ Home service looks like a formidable competitor to providers of landline telephony as it combines the potential of low cost VoIP calling with the mobility of GSM and WiFi. As the T-Mobile spokesperson says in this brief video, HotSpot @ Home could be a replacement for a landline phone. Club Viodi members, log-in to read the my analysis on whether this will be the case with this new service.

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The bottom line is that T-Mobile’s Hotspot @ Home service could be a replacement for landline service, but it will not be in its present form.

Over the past few weeks, I seriously considered adopting T-Mobile’s HotSpot @ Home mobile service. About the same time T-Mobile introduced this new service, the battery on my T-Mobile phone started to die. By the time, I reached Anchorage for the OPASTCO 2007 Summer Convention, my phone was on life support and I was in desperate need of a new battery. Unfortunately, T-Mobile does not offer service or retail outlets in Alaska, so I had to do all of my research on the Internet and via the phone with a T-Mobile representative.

My hope was that I would be able to eliminate at least one home phone line and save a few bucks a month in the process (after all, I would be more of a bundled customer and a bundled customer should get a better deal). As a bonus, the WiFi feature promised to improve the quality of wireless phone calls inside my office.

The Samsung or Nokia telephones, which work with the Hot Spot @ Home service, are $49 after rebates. To add the unlimited calling through the home hot spot, it is $9.99 per phone (a special deal that ends at the end of the month) or 19.99 for a family plan (since we only have two phones, this latter deal was not much of a deal at all).

If we wanted to avail ourselves of the T-Mobile’s extensive WiFi network (found at most, if not all, Starbucks, many airports as well as thousands of other places), then we would have had to fork over another $20 per month. The AT&T phone line we would eliminate costs us about $15 a month, so best case we might be breaking even and worse case we might pay an extra $20 or more per month.

Still hoping that I could somehow justify paying more for such a cool service, I decided to get a hands on look at the combo WiFi-GSM phones from Samsung and Nokia that work with this service. We looked at all of the combinations of service plans, thinking we might be able to get two phones on a family shared plan and at least pay the same, but have a lot of cool features like Internet access on our phone.

As we were considering porting our home number to my wife’s cell phone, she asked a very good question, “Can we use our regular phones to call outbound or inbound.” The sales representative did not know, but a quick look at the optional wireless routers T-Mobile offers showed no RJ-11 telephony port.

That pretty much ended that conversation as I went back to the “free phone” section and, in exchange for a 2-year contract, received a much better phone than my previous one for less money than if I had bought a battery for my old phone.

In retrospect, there were several reasons why I did not make the leap to the HotSpot at Home service, including:

  • Lack of support for the existing landline phones in our house – my wife did not want to have to contend with sharing her phone with our 8 year old (the thought to get him one never came up in conversation).
  • No support for E911.
  • It promises any WiFi hot spot can potentially be used as a gateway, but I could not log onto the open hot spot that was at the deli next store. I kept receiving an endless “connecting” message. This did not inspire confidence.
  • The overall value just was not there. The savings were not enough and the increased utility from this service were not enough to break through the Pyle wall of inertia.
  • The sales representative suggested this product was primarily about improving signal quality where coverage is weak, whereas the T-Mobile Marketing Director, Mike Selman, suggested this could be, “a landline replacement.” This seems to be symptomatic of a poorly defined service (is this offering about better mobile or landline replacement?).
  • T-Mobile may not have this product right, but some carrier, (I predict Sprint will be the first – since they won’t be cannibalizing themselves like AT&T and Verizon) will put all of the pieces together to put together a service that offers the best of Vonage with the best of mobile.

    Maybe independent telcos can be the ones by creating a combination WiFi/Landline service, as suggested by Bill Murray earlier this year in this video at OPASTCO’s 2007 Winter Convention.[/hidepost]

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