Interesting article here about the trials & tribulations of the new T-Mo US dual-mode service. No wonder there's been no nationwide rollout in the US yet.
Even leaving aside the difficulties in getting the technology tuned... is it just me, or are other people also staggered by the line "regularly exceeded their 2,000-minute-per-month T-Mobile family plan". I know you lot the other side of the Atlantic talk an awful lot on the old dog-and-bone, but even so, that's an awful lot of chatter. I probably talk about 200 mins / month on my mobile (incoming & outgoing) plus maybe another 400 on Skype & fixed-line put together.... and that's including doing hour-long briefing conference calls.
Edit
OK, maybe 30 mins each per day isn't that much, if you spend all day at your desk or in your car making sales calls. And I guess it puts people in the rare category of actually regularly using the WiFi / cellular handover bit, if they're always gabbing away to clients on the phone when they get home in the car. I'll add that to my list of "niche target markets for dual-mode usage", along with Finns' second homes in remote forest areas which have better broadband connectivity than cellular coverage.
Dean Bubley's Disruptive Wireless: Thought-leading wireless industry analysis
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Author of that article checking in -- the folks that I wrote about who use closer to 3,000 minutes per month, or 50 hours of talk time aren't that unusual. They have a $20 per month unlimited long distance plan on their landline, but the fellow in the couple, Matthew, has a 2 1/2 hour daily commute (which means he makes some calls during that period), and it's what he uses when away from home. His wife runs a business with her cell as her primary contact number.
For a business, it's not that strange to make dozens of hours of calls per employee per month, so their usage is actually somewhat lower than one might expect.
At least the call quality was good when they had a connection.
I just received a cell phone call from my mother. She had to identify who she was because I couldn't recognize her voice. Then I still thought it was a prank call, the sound was horrific. (I was on cell too.)
Do you know who T-mobile is using for their UMA technology. I believe they are a customer of PCTel, but don't know for sure.
Everyone's being coy about who is providing back-end gear. It could be Kineto, but they aren't saying.
'I'll add that to my list of "niche target markets for dual-mode usage"': See, I don't view it as "needs a handoff" service. It's really a way for T-Mobile to offer flat-rate service in the home without having a wire that they own into that house. It's a way to present a single bill to customers for two services (fixed and mobile) thus saving the huge cost of presenting separate bills. It's a way for customers to have a single phone that has multiple features. It's a way to get Vonage without having to have yet another adapter and yet another service.
None of this has to do with the handoff, which is a nice extra.
The story can be different depends
on what phone you have.
Nokia/Moto has implemented UMA by
themselves.
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