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 Review by rcbrcb 
UPDATED: 270 days ago
member for 2.7 years, 951 visits, last login: 2 days ago
 Chicago,Cook,IL
 $10 per month (12 month contract)
 about 3 days
 "$10 Unlmited Calls, Easy Setup, Excellent Support Services"
 "None"
 "Great Service"
| Web-site:
Ease of Installation:
Call Quality:
Reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
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I have been a T-Mobile Wireless Subscriber for a few years now after coming over from AT&T/Cingular and have been VERY happy with T-Mobile Customer Service so when I heard about the new $10.00 Unlimited Home Phone Service , I wanted to give it a shot. I currently pay about $40 for home phone service through my Cable Provider, so this would be a nice savings. I called last Wednesday to order and spent about 20 minutes with a very knowlegeable sales rep who got my order all setup and processed my Number Port Request. He offered to reduce the 2 year commitment to 1 year and he also waived the $35.00 activation fee that is normally charged. There were two options for shipping, 1st was free ground shipping (5-7 working days) and a $16 2 day express option. I choose the free 5-7 day ground option and I had the equipment at my door in 2 days!
The Router Setup took about 15 minutes and all was working without a hitch.
The phone line was active within 10 minutes of powering up the router and is running on a temp # while they complete the port of my existing home #. Voicemail is the same as the VM for wireless service so that was snap to get setup. I had to only hit one button on the router to automatically send the WPA Key to my BB Curve and all of my TiVo's and the Wii found the new network right away and locked on.
So far I am VERY impressed with this service, but I will update after I have had it for awhile.....
8/6/08 Update - Have had the service running for two weeks now and couldn't be happier. The porting of my old # was done on time and worked right away, didn't even have to reboot the Router! Call quality is excellent. Bravo T-Mobile!
9/9/08 Update - I am solidly impressed with this service....I have had no issues since I began using it in late July.
2/25/09 Update - Have Zero problems with the @Home Service and am very satisfied.
Followup comments:  | |
rcbrcb
Premium
join:2007-02-21
Chicago, IL | Re: 2.4 GHz Good to know, thanks for the info. I will keep an eye out for interference as I am using my BB Curve on the wireless as well. | |
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keysgate
join:2003-03-15
Trenton, MI
 ·T-Mobile VoIP
 ·T-Mobile US
| message waiting light Please let me know if your message waiting light works on your phone. I have new Phillips 6.0 phones that worked great with ATT CallVantage. But do not work with T-Mobile? I have seen others with problem in the forums.
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"Oh my antenna gone...oh no its right down here, maybe if i wiggle it around i'll get more service" | |
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rcbrcb
Premium
join:2007-02-21
Chicago, IL | Re: message waiting light Yes, my message waiting lights do work on my phones..... | |
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Using Hotspot
@comcast.net
|  Pros and Cons, and Answering Machines
Pros:
Price: If you already have TM cell service the price can't be beat. $50 for the router, $36 for line activation, and $10/mo for service.
Indoor wiring: After the phone company goes "dead" (usually 2-3 days after the number ports) AND after you disconnect telco at your phone box outside the house, connect the router phone jack to any jack in the house with any phone line. It works. If you don't disconnect the phone co line, you'll get a warble when you answer the phone.
Cons:
Uptime: It's hard to beat tel co on 99.999%. We've had one brief downtime in 1 month. It will go down if there is a power failure OR a cable outage (we use Comcast internet), but even during a 1 week powerfailure last year (Seattle) our cell phones continued to work.
TM and hot-spot: T-mobile has glomed this new feature onto their current offereings without really addressing it as a new line of service. So their website doesn't really gear anything to this new feature. To them, it's just another cellphone, just one that is stationary with unlimited minutes. Examples: The voicemail prompt callers get ask if you would like to page this person (????). There are no web-based features common to other VOIP offerings. It's "you get what you pay for" here.
Compatability with old phones and answering machines: If you're like us and like the stand-alone answering machine, it may not work. Our 10yo Lucent, and 3 new answering machines that I bought and returned didn't work. The problem, I believe, is that the WRTU54G router's "hangup signal" (0 voltage) is too short, so the answering machines don't realize the caller has hang up. So at the end of every message there is 10 seconds of wailing busy signal. A similar problem with the "flash" function on our Panasonic 5.8GHz phones was solved by an astute TM tech support by finding an obscure config on the phone to decrease the flash duration sensitivity from 300ms (standard) to 90ms.
Router and VOIP: the router firmware has essentially no VOIP configurations. The above hang-up problem could be fixed on other routers by changing the CPC duration (how long the voltage goes to zero). Cisco/Linksys basically took a popular router architechture and stuck VOIP on it. As of today they still haven't posted their firmware sourcecode as they are required to do under the Gnu GPL (since it's based on Linux). They say they're working on it. | |
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tmob cust
@comcast.net
| t-mobile @home costs 
The $10 per month T-mobile@home deal can end up costing existing t-mobile customers an additional $50 per month. If you have a t-mobile family plan with 5 existing lines, T-mobile requires you to either drop one of the lines or open up a new account at $39.99 per month in order to get the @Home service. It's not what it's a cranked up to be. | |
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rcbrcb
Premium
join:2007-02-21
Chicago, IL | Re: t-mobile @home costs Ad what does that have to do with my review of this product? | |
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jupiter
join:2001-03-09
Chicago, IL
 ·Comcast
| @home with comcast? Am I able to get t@home if I have comcast internet? Currently I have Comcast for voice, internet and cable. It requires you to have a modem for voice as does @home. Thus, my question is would I be able to get voice service and have comcast internet work??? Do you have to have Tmobile wireless in order to get @home voice? | |
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lrp
@ameritech.net
| Re: @home with comcast? Have you gotten the callerID on the TV to work? I had a temporary number on my @home router for a few days before my landline number was ported. During that time, there was a wrong number call to the temporary number. The callerID displayed on my TV but it hasn't done it since. T-Mobile told me that Comcast supports this but Comcast said it doesn't work. I also saw a comment on another discussion group that said it did work. ??? | |
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