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bobgwen
join:2001-07-07
Bartow, FL
 ·Comcast
| T-mobile at home I am glad I saw your post because I too have been a T-mobile customer since they were voice stream. And my wife and I have been thinking about getting their $10.00 a month home service. And, like you, I would be getting rid of verizon for home and at&t for long distance. My only problem is I have a home alarm monitored by adt and I have been looking into the monitoring companies that look at it over broadband. How much is the final bill with taxes and fees tacked on the $10.00?
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brought to you by Carl's Jr.
Esteban Colberto for President of Cuba | |
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YPAM
@bellsouth.net
| TMobile@Home I too just got TMobile at home and have also been a long time customer of TMobile , and have had a very good experience with their service. TMobile @ Home I must say surprised me. It's a very nice clear voice connection. My brother called me the other day and he lives out of state, I literally thought he was in town. The connection and voice quality was excellent.
I canceled my landline and use this service at home along with their cell phone service. You might expect if you lose your internet service you won't have phone service, but if you have a decent reliable broadband/DSL or Cable internet connection you could expect a reliable inexpensive service. Living in Florida one might expect some weather related outages with the internet and phone down time, but I figured if that happens I'll use my cell phone. Really, I experience very few outages, so I'm thrilled to be trying this service.
I give it thumbs up! | |
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YPRAM
@bellsouth.net
| I too just got TMobile at home and have also been a long time customer of TMobile , and have had a very good experience with their service. TMobile @ Home I must say surprised me. It's a very nice clear voice connection. My brother called me the other day and he lives out of state, I literally thought he was in town. The connection and voice quality was excellent.
I canceled my landline and use this service at home along with their cell phone service. You might expect if you lose your internet service you won't have phone service, but if you have a decent reliable broadband/DSL or Cable internet connection you could expect a reliable inexpensive service. Living in Florida one might expect some weather related outages with the internet and phone down time, but I figured if that happens I'll use my cell phone. Really, I experience very few outages, so I'm thrilled to be trying this service.
I give it a thumbs up! | |
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rosie26y
@rr.com
| I am very interested in the @home service. I have been a t-mobile customer for a few years now and like it very much.
I have been researching the service but have been unable to find a complete list of calling features it comes with. I am now using a digital phone service through Time Warner. There is a feature on that which blocks private callers. I was curious if the @home service has this feature and what others besides the call waiting/ caller id that's the norm there are. I'd appreciate it if someone could list the features.
Thanks, Rosie  | |
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jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ
 ·T-Mobile VoIP
| Re: @home features Hi Rosie-
After my initial review, I experienced two brief outages in the first 4 days of use. Both times the blue LED on the router went out (this indicates loss of VoIP service) and the phones lost their dial tone. In both cases, I rebooted the router and phone service was available again within a minute.
Not ideal, but if it's just a matter of interim growing pains, I can deal with it. The second time this happened I got Customer Care on the phone, and the rep I spoke with mentioned that she had heard a couple of other complaints like mine, and that rebooting the router fixed them in all cases. As of 4 days ago (July 23) Customer Care had no official instructions from Tech Support about the issue, and there was a 20 minute hold queue when I asked about tech support, so I decided to try back another time if the problems continued.
That was 4 days ago - and I haven't had a single issue since then. Not sure what this means...perhaps T-Mobile WAS having an issue and it's been resolved - impossible to know right now. Everything else works so well that I'm willing to put up with a bit of inconvenience if it looks like it will be resolved down the road. I must say that the last 4 days of service have been flawless, which is certainly an improvement over the first 4.
Re: your question about features -- at the moment, the feature set is very basic compared to some of the other VoIP providers. Caller ID, Call Waiting, 3-Way Conference Calling, Call Forwarding and the same Voicemail that you have on your T-Mobile mobile phone account(s) are all standard.
I may be wrong, but I believe the only optional feature at the moment is "CallerTunes" (T-Mobile's version of "ringback tones" - where you can pay a small monthly fee to have a specific sound clip played for a caller instead of the ringing sound they normally hear while waiting for you to answer.
Some of the competing services certainly offer more features right now, such as web-access to voicemail (e.g., "visual voicemail") or email notification of a waiting message. Those really don't excite me, and aren't decision points for me.
The sound quality is superb with T-Mobile@Home, Customer Care at T-Mobile is excellent - and has been for years - which is one of the reasons I've stuck with them through every renewal when I had a cost-free option to change carriers. I've got the exact same people helping me now with my home phone that I do with my mobile lines. When a compare notes with my friends and colleagues who have Verizon service, the contrast is stark to say the least!
One more feature that may be significant if you call home when you're out, or somebody from home calls your mobile: if you have unlimited T-Mobile to T-Mobile as part of your plan (and I do), calls between a T-Mobile cellphone and your T-Mobile@Home account do not go against the minutes allotment in your mobile plan: your T-Mobile@Home is treated just like another T-Mobile cellphone number for the purposes of inter-phone billing. Seems that perhaps 20% of my mobile calling is to/from home, so this will reduce my minutes usage noticeably.
Some interesting tidbits regarding the setup at home:
You can plug any standard phone into the phone jack on the back of the WRTU54G-TM router. There are two jacks, and two SIM slots in the device corresponding to these: each router can handle up to two telephone numbers this way - if you want a second line, you can get a second T-Mobile@Home provisioned SIM and pay another $10/month for a second line.
I chose the DECT 6 phone from vtech that T-Mobile promotes for a couple of reasons, rather than keeping my old phones (which were perfectly good 5.8GHz vtech's). Most wireless phone sets that are designed to be expandable (multiple phones) have their own answering machine. If they have any kind of VMWI (visual message waiting indicator) on the handset, it's generally tied to the built in answering machine on the base unit. In contrast, these vtech DECT 6 phones are NOT designed to use shared proprietary answer machine -- the assumption is that you will either provide your own answering machine, or be hooked up to a 3rd party answering service such as T-Mobile's voicemail system.
The difference is that systems such as T-mobile's voicemail will typically implement an industry standard signalling technology (FSK or "stutter tone") that a number of systems will recognize. Here's what this means to you:
The WRTU54G-TM router DOES recognize the standards (FSK / stutter tone), and will indicate that a message is waiting on t-mobile voicemail by blinking the blue LED on your router for the corresponding phone line. I haven't tried this, but I'm guessing that a standard phone plugged into the router will probably play a "stutter tone" if there's a message waiting when you pick up the handset. Verizon and its predecessors (Bell Atlantic, etc) all did this for years with their managed voicemail services. Not bad - but you have to pick up the phone to see if there's a message waiting for you.
However, if you use one of the handsets designed to respond to FSK / stutter tone, you will get a visual signal on the handset showing that there's an unheard message waiting in voicemail. There are a few such phones on the market (not too many, as most assume you'll have their answering machine on your base station), but the vtech DECT 6 phones from T-Mobile are competitively priced and good quality.
My setup: once I got the first two phones (one with a base station, one extension) setup from T-Mobile, I got on vtech's website and ordered 3 more extensions at $30 a piece. They arrived at my home 2 days later. About a minute to pair each phone with the base station, and I had five handsets distributed around my house.
Now - any time there's a voice mail message waiting, ALL FIVE handsets light up the dedicated voicemail button on the phone, so I can see that there's a message waiting from anywhere in the house. The dedicated buttons on the phone come pre-programmed (they can be set to use with other vendor's voicemail systems) to work with T-Mobile voicemail - so I can call Voicemail with a single keypress, pause, skip, delete, etc with dedicated buttons.
The DECT 6 phones have great range (I walk around outside with them) and great sound quality. Between the improved audio and the natural integration of their features with T-Mobile voicemail, I'm willing to replace my old 5.8 GHz phones (which I will sell).
But it's not required: you can plug any standard phone into the WRTU54G-TM router and it will work.
One last interesting wrinkle: I've read this on a few sites -- once you disconnect "the phone company" (most likely Verizon) from your home telephone wiring (legacy in-wall wires / phone jacks / etc), the wiring is simply there for you to use. You can, for instance, get a standard phone extension cord with an RJ45 plug at each end, put one end into your WRTU54G-TM router, and the other end into a phone jack in the wall (remember: external phone service must be DISCONNECTED first!), and "light up" all the connected phone jacks in your house. You're basically powering your home wired phone system with T-Mobile now instead of "the phone company". For people who don't want to go with wireless phones in the house, this may be a perfect alternative approach.
A couple of caveats: 1) I have not personally tried this, although I have read several articles indicating that it works well. 2) I have read mixed reports about people having success with T-Mobile@Home combined with a home answering machine -- if you're counting on using a dedicated answering machine instead of T-Mobile's voicemail, I would research this more first, as it may not work.
As I write this, I'm on day 8 with T-Mobile@Home, and it has been flawless for the past 4. Assuming no surprises in the next 24 hours, I'll be asking T-Mobile to port over my home number to the service, and dropping my old combo of Verizon local and AT&T long distance, which has been costing me a total of about $75 a month for years. Instant savings of $65 a month, better customer service, and elimination of two bills in the mailbox each month, since my T-Mobile@Home line simply shows up as a new line on my existing T-Mobile monthly bill.
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Jon
Jonathan Strong
The Strong Group
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rosie26y
@rr.com
| Re: @home features WOW! Thanks so much for all that info Jon. It's extremely helpful to me! I was pretty sure that the features were just the basic ones but I just wanted to check with people who are using the service. I have a Uniden wireless phone system at the moment. It's a 2.4gHZ. There's a DECT 6.0 system on the Uniden site that is made for the @home type service I am pondering over. It comes with the base plus an extra handset for $35 and extra handsets are on sale for $18. I've had good luck with Uniden so far. I have digital phone service and have 6 phones (3 on the uniden I mentioned and then 2 on another wireless system and one with an aswering machine.) I like the idea of what you mentioned about plugging in the @home service to "light up" all the jacks in my home. That would make things easier until I could get all the phones on one system, whether I go with the uniden or the ones t-mobile offers.
Again, thanks for all the great info. You've helped me out a lot.
Rosie | |
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jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ
·T-Mobile VoIP
| Re: @home features Happy to share! I'm pleased to note that the system is still up (I was out of the house for a few hours), bringing me almost to the end of day 8 with the phones, and the end of 4 full days with no problem. I'll report back as I learn more about this and I get more experience with the service. Hopefully good news! Rosie - if you go with this, please share your experiences too.
thx!
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Jon
Jonathan Strong
The Strong Group
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rosie26y
@rr.com | Re: @home features Ok, will do Jon!
Thanks a bunch!
Rosie | |
| | | Probedude
join:2004-05-09
Ventura, CA
| FWIW, I've just had to reboot my T-mobile VOIP router - ironically while I was typing a note on person's blog about my problems porting my landline number over.
While typing, my Yahoo Messenger went offline. I couldn't visit or ping any external website. I couldn't log into the t-mobile/Linksys VOIP router, I could not ping my DSL modem.
I power cycled the VOIP router, everything is fine again.
Now that I think about it, I had a similar problem a few days ago but that cleared up by itself after ~ 5 mins. (That time I was able to log into my DSL modem and diagnotics on it all passed so it wasn't the problem then either).
Bugs in the router or the T-mobile service? (I'm thinking the router)
Lastly, porting of my landline has been unsuccessful as of yet though when I called yesterday (the day it was supposed to be completed) they 'took care of everything and it should work now'. Today I called I was put on hold for 25 mins, then got an operator that said that the number transfer dept. closed 15 mins ago!
I'm happy with the quality of the service. Hopefully things will just keep getting better. | |
| | | | Probedude
join:2004-05-09
Ventura, CA
| Re: @home features Another FWIW. The firmware for this router is no longer on Linksys website.
Since this is a router specific to T-Mobile,I wonder if all firmware updates will be obtained from T-Mobile from now on.
(I saw something similar posted regarding their SPA900 product) | |
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rosie26y
@rr.com
| Re: @home features Thanks Jon. All good stuff to know and keep in mind. My next upgrade isn't until April so maybe a lot of these issues will be taken care of. *fingers crossed* I will just keep up with reading other people's experiences til then.
Thanks for posting, Rosie | |
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rosie26y
@rr.com | Thanks for your posts also, Probedude! All this info is very useful to me!
Rosie | |
| | | | Probedude
join:2004-05-09
Ventura, CA | Took 4 calls on separate days, but finally my landline number is ported. Yay! Now I can cancel my extra phone line AND cancel long distance on the main line. | |
| | | | | Probedude
join:2004-05-09
Ventura, CA | Re: @home features Had to power cycle the Linkys TM VOIP router today.
Wife called and said she couldn't get on the internet and the blue light was out.
This happened about 10 days ago. Others are having similar problems. | |
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jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ
·T-Mobile VoIP
| Re: voice mail light I don't think there should be compatibility issues. As far as I know, T-Mobile's VMWI signalling is simply using one of the industry standards (FSK / stutter tone).
I would suggest a couple of things to try:
1) if you can find the actual model number of the Phillips unit, see if you can get technical info on it regarding what it will respond to for VMWI activation. I believe most units will respond to either FSK or stutter tone, but this is really on the edge of my knowledge, so I'm speculating here. It's conceivable also that the phone responds to one OR the other, and that you can select which type of signalling it responds to. If you can't locate a technical manual online, or find a reference to it via google, I'd suggest calling Phillips tech support directly to ask.
2) you might try calling T-Mobile, and asking for tech support - since 1st level Customer Care folks aren't trained typically in the more esoteric technical issues. Once you get to tech support, though, you should be able to find somebody who actually knows what kind of signalling the voicemail service, and the router, use to tell the phones to turn on the VMWI. It's also conceivable that this is switchable at T-Mobile's end, and that it's either OFF, or somehow switched to one of the signalling techniques that your Phillips phone doesn't recognize.
3) Last resort: since the phone base station plugs into the WRTU54G-TM router, it's quite likely (I think) that the signal the router sends out is NOT the same as the VMWI signal the router receives from T-Mobile's voicemail server. You may want to call Linksys tech support if T-Mobile is unable to help, although I doubt this will be necessary. Also, in general, I have much better success with T-Mobile customer care than I ever had with Linksys.
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Jon
Jonathan Strong
The Strong Group
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keysgate
join:2003-03-15
Trenton, MI
·T-Mobile VoIP
 ·T-Mobile US
| Re: voice mail light I tried the t-moble tech support. All they would say, if you got the blinking blue light and studder tone, your good to go. Its just aggravating that CallVantage uses a standard that T-Moble does not support without buying thier phones.
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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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jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ
·T-Mobile VoIP
| Re: voice mail light Can you post the model number of your Phillips phone? (and if there's a different number for the base station vs extension handsets, please post both). Maybe we can help track down some useful info.
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Jon
Jonathan Strong
The Strong Group
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keysgate
join:2003-03-15
Trenton, MI
·T-Mobile VoIP
·T-Mobile US
| Re: voice mail light im doing your next step, call Phillips. they said the phones use a standard that cannot be changed. I was told to reset all phones (batteries out on all handsets) and unplug base station and wait 1/2 hour. at 9:00 i will plug everything back up. but still don't understand what will change. but who knows, I will try. Phillips CD440 all one set.
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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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keysgate
join:2003-03-15
Trenton, MI | still nothing, its not a big deal--just aggravating!--i can liv with it--thanks | |
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jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ
·T-Mobile VoIP
| Re: voice mail light I took a quick look at the Philips phone - certainly a good high end device, and from what I'm reading, it SHOULD work for you.
Here's a link to the manual:
»www.p4c.philips.com/files/c/cd44···_aen.pdf
Just out of curiosity: have you "activated voice mail" feature on the phone as shown in 5.8.1 of the manual?
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Jon
Jonathan Strong
The Strong Group
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edrxx
@cfmcden.com
| I've also been a customer of t-mobile since the voicestream wireless days and I've always been happy with their service. We jumped at the chance to get their home service because we hate qwest so much  Overall, we've been happy, but there are a few things to consider.....
1) We have an ADT alarm system and I was told by ADT that comcast is the only approved voip that will interact with ADT...whatever that means....I was told I could try using t-mobile, but they could not guarantee that it would work.
2) TIVO also needs a traditional landline to work properly.
3) The only problem I've experienced so far has to do with dialing the 800 number of my insurance company. I've never had a problem calling this number in the past, but when I call it from the t-mobile @ home service I get a recording about the subscriber's number is not in service...I reported this to t-mobile and I was told it was likely a routing problem and they would get back to me. When they got back to me they gave me some song and dance about how they can't guarantee that 800 numbers will work on their service! I don't know if it's true or not, but it just felt like they wanted to be done with the problem and so tried to feed me that line of crap..... | |
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tlange
@comcast.net
| I have chronicled my experiences at my blog
»fromtheunknown.wordpress.com
It has been going on since 7/12/2008 and I still have no blue light and no phone service.
It seems to be a standoff between T-Mobile and Comcast! | |
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tlange
@comcast.net | I finally have phone service. It was a matter of a T-Mobile technician having me check two UDP ports. Once I opened those ports, then I got the blue light and was able to make and receive calls... | |
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jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ
·T-Mobile VoIP
| Re: Phone service works said by tlange :
I finally have phone service. It was a matter of a T-Mobile technician having me check two UDP ports. Once I opened those ports, then I got the blue light and was able to make and receive calls...
Good info. I've seen a couple of other references to this from others on other forums. I didn't have to make any changes to the defaults in my system, but it seems that a few do, and it's probably worth noting this in a FAQ of some sort for this service.
- Jon | |
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jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ
·T-Mobile VoIP
| Re: fees on top of $10 / monthly With all the "taxes, fees and surcharges", it appears that I'll have about $5 in extra charges on top of the $10 monthly fee for the line. This includes things like State Sales Tax (NJ), 911 System/Emergency Response Fee, Federal Universal Service Fund, Regulatory Programs Fee. Amazing how these surcharges add up when you consider them from a percentage basis, but the actual total isn't high.
BTW: quick update -- the service continues to be excellent! I was thrilled to receive my last Verizon and AT&T bills (local and long distance respectively).
- Jon
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Jon
Jonathan Strong
The Strong Group
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| | adayton
join:2008-09-27
Bay Shore, NY
·T-Mobile VoIP
| Am having same [ no blue light ] problem. was working fine until one week end night optimum cable company did some "maintenance". Now no blue light. I do not have windows firewall on. I did port forward UDP ports 500 and 4500 to the router address (0.1). still no go.... | |
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jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ
·T-Mobile VoIP
| Re: Phone service works Sorry to hear about the continuing issues. Overall, my setup seems to be increasingly stable. I believe putting in the 1.00.09 version of the firmware in the WRTU54G-TM helped, but my impression is that T-Mobile is handling provisioning and network maintenance for this service better and better as well at their own locations.
Over the last few weeks the service has "just worked", to the point where I often forget that it's VoIP and not the POTS service we had here for the last 18 years... | |
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jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ
·T-Mobile VoIP
| I won't repeat it all here. Just to let anyone watching this thread that I've added latest experiences to the review. In short: I still see the service as a great deal.
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Jon
Jonathan Strong
The Strong Group
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