Service for Calls Over Web
Aims to Improve Reception, Savings
By AMOL SHARMA
May 3, 2007; Page B3
T-Mobile USA Inc., the fourth largest U.S. wireless operator, is planning a national launch this summer of cellphones that can roam on Wi-Fi hotspots in homes and coffee shops, carrying calls over the Web to improve indoor reception and help customers save on monthly cellular minutes.
The service, known as Hotspot at Home, has been in trial in Seattle for a few months and the carrier is ready to roll it out nationwide as early as mid-June, people familiar with the matter say. The phones that currently work with the service are models made by Nokia Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co.
Customers in the trials pay $20 on top of their monthly cellphone bill to use the service, with a $5 additional monthly fee to add another family member. The pricing may be tweaked for the national launch and the service will be available in T-Mobile stores and through some retail partners, the people said.
Thus far, consumers have used hotspots like the ones T-Mobile has in Starbucks shops, airports and elsewhere to access the Web with laptops. The new service lets people use those same networks with their cellphones. When a user comes in range of a hotspot, a call is supposed to be transferred onto the Wi-Fi network, with no noticeable change for the user.
T-Mobile has had some technological problems with the project, such as making a smooth handoff between the cellphone and Wi-Fi networks and maintaining battery life, people familiar with the trials say. Many of those issues have been ironed out in the latest versions of the Wi-Fi phones, those people say.
T-Mobile USA, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, declined to comment on its launch of the service.
Customers can use their existing wireless router with the new service, but T-Mobile offers its own special router for free, with a $50 mail-in rebate. The company said its router will enable better service, including longer battery life.
One feature that might be added later to the T-Mobile router but not in time for the national launch, people familiar with the matter say, is the ability to plug in ordinary landline phones, which would make T-Mobile a direct competitor to landline phone providers like Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. That would be especially useful for families with multiple cellphone users. Instead of choosing one cellphone to work on the Wi-Fi connection at home, families could share a single landline.
T-Mobile isn't the only wireless operator trying to fuse its cellphone network with Wi-Fi-capable phones. AT&T's Cingular Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp. have tested similar services. In Europe, British Telecom, Telecom Italia and Orange are also launching Wi-Fi phones.
Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group PLC, said the carrier isn't convinced that Wi-Fi technology, which operates on unlicensed frequencies -- a public park of radio spectrum -- is high-enough quality to carry the carrier's voice calls. "There is no way to put the controls around that service to give our customers a guaranteed great experience," Mr. Nelson said.
Frank Hanzlik, managing director of the Wi-Fi Alliance, a trade group that certifies that handsets comply with Wi-Fi standards, said the biggest opportunity might lie not with consumers, but businesses, since people spend so much time in their offices, where cellphone service can be weak. "I think that enterprises are going to drive this trend aggressively," Mr. Hanzlik said. "That's where the low hanging fruit is." Companies like Cisco Systems Inc. and SpectraLink Corp. have already been pushing sales of Wi-Fi handsets to businesses, though they don't double as cellphones.
T-Mobile's new service shows the company is intent on leveraging its network of over 8,000 hotspots in the U.S. even as it plans to upgrade its cellular-phone network to offer "3G" broadband services. Last year, T-Mobile acquired $4.2 billion of radio spectrum in a Federal Communications Commission auction to build such a network. T-Mobile's 3G strategy will center on social-networking applications and hyper-personalization, according to a person briefed on the company's plans.
T-Mobile, which has 25 million subscribers and is a key growth-driver for parent company Deutsche Telekom, hopes its new initiatives will attract new customers as it competes with larger carriers like Verizon and AT&T in a nearly saturated U.S. market. All the initiatives are part of a brand transformation T-Mobile initiated last fall, when it dropped longtime pitchwoman Catherine Zeta Jones and launched a new marketing campaign with the tagline "Stick Together." The company's new "My Faves" phones let people call any five numbers, wireless or landline, for free. T-Mobile says My Faves has been adopted more quickly by its customers than any other service the company has offered.
Write to Amol Sharma at
![[email address]](?emailimage=14b0256233ce16807dc743fadd7fb75d)
1
T-Mobile + WiFi = Curve?
![[IFC]Area51's Avatar](customavatars/avatar74064_2.gif){kind=avatar}
