T-Mobile Announces WiFi Meshing Cellphone

tregetour writes with a link to a New York Times article penned by David Pogue about a quiet announcement last week by T-Mobile. It has nothing to do with the iPhone, but it could still be a welcome revolution for users plagued by high cellphone bills. "Here's the basic idea. If you're willing to pay $10 a month on top of a regular T-Mobile voice plan, you get a special cellphone. When you're out and about, it works like any other phone; calls eat up your monthly minutes as usual. But when it's in a Wi-Fi wireless Internet hot spot, this phone offers a huge bargain: all your calls are free. You use it and dial it the same as always — you still get call hold, caller ID, three-way calling and all the other features — but now your voice is carried by the Internet rather than the cellular airwaves." He goes on to explain further benefits of the system, and describes the wireless routers that the company will be pushing with the service. The only thing missing: an estimate of when it will hit stores.

An estimate?

[by Anonymous Coward]

How about last week... when it actually hit stores? Anyway, it's just too bad that existing phones with WiFi like the Dash don't support this.

Not when, but if...

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

If the carriers see this eating into their revenues they won't support it. Why give something away when you can charge for it?

Re:

[guruevi (827432)]

So you can sell the "premium" service plan to them. Whether or not you make a call doesn't make a difference for most providers, the infrastructure is the same and has to be running anyway in order for you to get reception.

Yes, calling eats more bandwidth, but not everybody is calling at the same time nor 24/7 so the point is moot. That's how they can sell you unlimited calling/messaging plans at a premium ($5 extra/month).

The same here, whether or not the infrastructure will be used, the equipment and a re

Re:

[E IS mC(Square) (721736)]

Because T-mobil is more customer oriented then other AT&T family? Before anybody starts, I know, a business entity has to make money - but some companies out there do it without sucking their customers to death.

Re:

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

Try again. T-Mobile has subscription-based WiFi hotspots in popular locations like Starbucks. Seems like this move is about lining T-Mobile's pockets just as much as regular cell service.

Re:Not when, but if...

[Ikoma Andy (41693)]

Which would probably be totally true HAD THE ARTICLE NOT SPECIFICALLY STATED that you could use your phone FREE at Starbucks T-Mobile hotspots!

Re:Not when, but if...

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

What do you think the $10 a month is for? T-Mobile is basically signing you up for a subscription to their WiFi service. Which is probably cheaper to run than the cell service. So T-Mobile gets you to sign up for cell service AND WiFi, then gets you to use less of the expensive GSM airtime and more of the inexpensive WiFi time. Voila, T-Mobile profits.

Quite a nifty scheme, actually.

Re:When did "Free" cost $10????

[Lemmy Caution (8378)]

The correct term is "unmetered." The minutes as such are free. The service is $10.

Re:

[Orange Crush (934731)]

They released it last week?! Wow. What kind of howling-idiot company pits their marketing department against Steve Jobs? That's, well, madness of the non-Spartan variety.

Right now it's only offered in a few areas. I suspect this is more of a test-marketing push rather than a full rollout. T-mobile is probably just dipping their toes in the VOIP waters and may not have rolled out enough IP/phone network gateways to handle a huge amount of subscribers. I'm willing to bet T-mobile deliberately unveiled th

Re:

[Lemmy Caution (8378)]

I got a Nokia 6086 and the T-Mobile @Home service just two days ago. I was already a T-Mobiole customer (and I've been happy enough with them that I'm not interested in moving to AT&T), just happened to be in the market for a cell-phone, and I had forgotten all about this new product until the customer service rep reminded me about it.

If you go to a T-Mobile store and get one of these phones either as a new customer or a contract-extending upgrade, it costs only $49, and (as the article notes) you can g

skype

[froggero1 (848930)]

seems like a market skype should get into... or are they already?

Re:skype

[RingDev (879105)]

The biggest problem with mobile wifi is hand offs. It's been a while since I've looked into the issue, I know there were a couple of MIT guys working on millisecond hand off from one hotspot to the next a year or two ago, but the power consumption was huge.

Cellphones don't have to handle hand offs, the towers do all the work. I had a job doing a lot of testing of call hand offs a few years back. You literally drive back and forth between a few towers, or in a bad hand off area (especially around lakes) and work on programming the towers as to when they should hand calls off to another tower based on vector, signal strength, and a tower list. The whole thing is dynamic too, so weather changes, call volume, new construction, etc... can all be handled at least in the short term with out further work.

I know Sysco has some really cool auto-meshing technology that makes their routers talk to each other and adjust signal strength to pick up for downed antennas, but that technology would have to mature a lot to get the same kind of hand off performance as cell phones enjoy.

-Rick

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

I've been offered jobs by both Sysco (sales rep, while working at a restaurant in HS/college. The regional manager ate there regularly, and he apparently liked the cut of my gib) and Cisco (In IT now.)

Now, i'm hitting the gym hardcore so i can look good in a thong and complete the Sisqo trifecta.

Re:skype

[Lemmy Caution (8378)]

I can attest, it changes over from VoIP to cellular tower seamlessly, with no noticeable change.

I start my calls while standing or parked next to a Starbuck's, drive off, and the entire call is free.

Great.

[evilpenguin (18720)]

Now "I'm in the coffee shop. Where RU?" will take 10000 times the bandwidth it took on ICQ.

So much for Wi-Fi hotspots being useful for telecommuting...

Re:

[Rob T Firefly (844560)]

Good point. While I can dig this for use on my own wireless network at home or work, I'm not sure all the customers (or the admins, for that matter) of places like coffee shops will be quite so thrilled.

However, this will get much more interesting in the future, considering the metropolitan areas that have been throwing around the idea of free municipal wifi.. imagine everyone in a given city getting free calls 24/7.

Re:Great.

[arivanov (12034)]

Most coffee shop deployments will not die on bandwith. They will die on packet rates. One VOIP call is 100 packets per second. 8 calls are 800. While the nominal rate of most devices used for APs should in theory allow 10+ times more than that, in reality they will die NAT-ing the traffic. 3-4 calls at most is what they can handle without excessively jittering the flows. 8+ calls is likely to kill most APs with built in NAT outright. 8 calls assuming IPSEC in UDP NAT traversal and AMR internally is around some measly 320Kbit. So packet rates start killing this long before bandwidth is of any concern.

While there are few of these phones, they will be great. If they really get market penetration its own popularity will kill it or make it useless as it will be switching to GSM/3G all the time due to detected congestion on the WiFi. From there on there will be endless billing nightmares as consumers will insist that they called over WiFi while the call really was routed over cellular and so on and so fourth.

It will be fun to watch. From the sidelines. Thanks god I am no longer in this business.

Re:

[CaptainPatent (1087643)]

Now "I'm in the coffee shop. Where RU?" will take 10000 times the bandwidth it took on ICQ.

So much for Wi-Fi hotspots being useful for telecommuting...

That statement would take approximately 2 seconds to say. cellphones transmit at ~8k/s. Flash adds are bigger in implementation than the resulting 12k phone packet. Additionally, every hot spot I've seen has a high-speed connection of some kind. 15 phones going at the same time would barely make an impact on the overall speed.
Additionally, it's not like we aren't gaining bandwidth every year at a breakneck pace. Sure this may be slightly noticeable at first, but even the slower connections in the very nea

Re:

[evilpenguin (18720)]

A) I was joking, and

B) The text version took 33 bytes plus packet overhead. Still way more efficient.

Another commenter who took me far too seriously points out (correctly) that it is packet rate that will be a problem. I would add that latency will also be a serious issue. I use Vonage on a 1Mbit wireless broadband connection and sometimes latency kills me. The delay messes up the codecs, which take time to resynch. I have to ask people to repeat themselves a lot because my network has highly variable RTT a

Provided you dont get arrested for using free wifi

[denis-The-menace (471988)]

With people getting arrested for using free WIFI
(http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/23/1 551227)
why would you use this?

Re:

[Lumpy (12016)]

No the correct call will be ....

Im in ....th....offie...shp... Where...r...Bzzzzt pooo bubububububub.. you?

every coffee shop I have ever been in had so high latency and jitter that Voip was 100% useless.

This will be an utter failure, Most broadband is high latency, most free wifi is throttled and minimal bandwidth shared way beyon the capabilities of the connection. T-mobile is trying to stay relevant without adding cell towers like they should be and picked something that will completely kill them as the

Mesh????

[fatgav (555629)]

Yeah, but how exactly is it a mesh?

Re:

[Chikenistheman (992447)]

T-Mobile hosts plenty of HotSpots of their own around the country (the majority being in a starbuck nearest you). So if you have a cell phone that is capable of Wi-Fi and CELL you can utilize a t-mobile hot spot when you're close or cell network when you're far. It's a t-mobile back end either way you connect.

Re:

[Nos. (179609)]

That makes it an endpoint, not a mesh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_network [wikipedia.org]

I don't see the connection

[SpiffyMarc (590301)]

What does this have to do with the iPhone? I mean, I know the summary says it doesn't have anything to do with the iPhone, but I'm not sure what that means. Did Apple figure out how to do this? Are they working with T-Mobile to roll it out? Are the phones made of white plastic?

Re:I don't see the connection

[CaptainPatent (1087643)]

Here's the connection:

It has nothing to do with the iPhone

Re:

[dirkdidit (550955)]

It's a new technology in the cell phone industry that isn't the iPhone or something for the iPhone. That's pretty much the only connection. That and this phone has WiFi capabilities, like the iPhone.

iPhone fatigue

[fistfullast33l (819270)]

Like the rest of the Slashdot community at this point, I decided this summary was worth my time only after I discovered it had nothing to do with the iPhone.

Re:iPhone fatigue

[abes (82351)]

That is as long as no one points out how it's interesting that Steve Jobs and the head of AT&T were talking about doing VOIP on the iPhone in the eventual future (it's in one of their interviews). Which would then lead to a conversation how this very well could be the eventual future of all cell phones.

Don't worry, though, to save your sanity, I won't mention it.

Re:

[mcrbids (148650)]

Which would then lead to a conversation how this very well could be the eventual future of all cell phones.

Begin conversation...

Locally, there's an Internet Service Provider called "ClearWire" that uses WiMAX to deliver ISP packets. It's real slick, too. When you buy service, you get a box about the size of your average router, with a power brick and an ethernet port.

Take it home, plug it in (power, computer) and go. It delivers DHCP address to your computer, and you're online in about 12 seconds. It really

Re:

[SeaFox (739806)]

What does this have to do with the iPhone? I mean, I know the summary says it doesn't have anything to do with the iPhone, but I'm not sure what that means.

The connection is, the iPhone does this right now with it's internet browsing (switching from EDGE to Wi-Fi), and lots of people wanted it to do the same thing with voice. That's one reason they wanted to get Skype working on the iPhone since then their voice calls would be handled the way data is.

Meshing?

[niceone (992278)]

How is this Meshing? I was expecting the handsets to talk to each other and form an adhoc wifi network.... now I check the word "mesh" doesn't appear in the article.

Re:

[isaac (2852)]

I believe 'meshing' here is referring to the seamless handoff of calls between GSM and WiFi, not that the phones form or use an adhoc WiFi mesh network. Agreed, not the right choice of words.

The real hotness about these phones: you can use them at any wifi hotspot in the world without roaming charges. That's a killer feature.

-Isaac

$10/Month?

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

Seems a little steep for being allowed to run a SIP client on a machine I own.

Also, where does 'meshing' come into this? This isn't a mesh network. If it were, then I could route packets from my phone via half a dozen other random users' phones to a hotspot and not need T-Mobile's network at all much of the time.

Not SIP. Universal Mobile Access

[Magnus Pym (237274)]

T-Mobile's GSM/WiFi phones do not use SIP when they are on WiFi. Instead, they
use a tunneling mechanism to tunnel back to the operator's core, and connect
to their GSM MSC instead through translation layer called UMA (Universal
Mobile Access).

GSM/UMTS has this concept of non-access-stratum
signaling, which consists of messages that are tunneled between the MSC
and the phone, which are completely transparent to the underlying
transport technology. (BTW, the presense of these layers is partially
what makes UMTS/GSM

Nokia 6136 launched in Europe last year.

[fantomas (94850)]

Nokia launched the 6136 last Feb (2006) in Europe:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,100000008 5,39252128,00.htm [zdnet.co.uk]

This does the roaming wifi/GSM stuff as well.

Tested in Oulu, Finland in 2006:
http://www.mobiledia.com/news/49241.html [mobiledia.com]

Anybody know how those tests have gone, what the take up is?

Encryption?

[jshriverWVU (810740)]

Would hate to work for a fortune 500 company and be talking on this with a co-worker only to have the packets sniffed from some random server in Malaysia on a major pipeline.

Re:

[AK Marc (707885)]

OK, so you are in Denver. You are talking to someone in Atlanta. The IP traffic routes from Denver to Chicago, down to Dallas, then off to Atlanta. I'm curious how you think that it will make it to Malaysia. If you are thinking that if you are in India and talking to someone in Australia and the packets could be intercepted in Malaysia, I'm curious why you are worried about the IP traffic being funneled through Malaysia, but not someone putting taps on the POTS connections taking the same route. Are yo

Why $10 extra?

[crow (16139)]

Why should people pay extra for this? It seems like it should save T-Mobile money by reducing the load on their cell towers (allowing them to reduce their infrastructure costs).

And what about the consumer who isn't short on minutes? Why not offer an option to use it without an extra charge, but still charge minutes?

Re:Why $10 extra?

[ad0gg (594412)]

Umm.. You still use tmobiles network. The call doesn't magically travel across the country and terminate at another phone.

Re:Why $10 extra?

[MaceyHW (832021)]

You pay "extra" because T-Mobile still has to operate a voip server and route your call. But those of us who make lots of calls from an area with wifi coverage can save money by changing to a plan with far fewer minutes and adding the $10 wifi option.

This is an outstanding development if you use your cell as a primary line and you have wifi at home. I hope it delivers as promised!

Don't be so pessimistic!

[Thail (1124331)]

Let me preface the rest by stating I work in T-Mobiles Operations and Engineering Department, and helped alpha test this device. =) When making a Wi-Fi call, the handset creates a GSM tunnel allowing it to maintain the same security used on any normal cellular call you make. So if you're still afraid of people tapping your calls, I recommend that you don't use a cell phone at all. No releasing it at the same time as the iphone doesn't seem like the best bet, however I'm not in marketing ;) One of the major advantages of this over a normal wi-fi phone, is that it will hand over between GSM and Wi-Fi and maintain the call. No other Wi-Fi call provider can offer that at this time (AFAIK). If you buy the phone but not the service, you can still use Wi-Fi but it will use your minutes as normal, the feature just give you unlimited Wi-Fi calls. Will it make calls for T-Mobile cheaper to process? Maybe if enough people start picking it up, but there was an investment in time and added hardware to the network that would need to be paid off first. But in the long run, yes t-mobile should save money as people route calls over IP, however, this savings is passed on to the customer in that they can make all the calls they want for $10 a month. (It's up to the customer to decide if they will use it enough to warrant that cost) Working for T-Mo I think this feature is great, but my opinion is of course biased.

Re:

[Thail (1124331)]

Yes, GSM will hand off to Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi will hand off to GSM. The billing is based on where the call originates however. That means when you get home and come in range of your wi-fi, to get the unlimited calling rates, you would need to hang up, and then reconnect the call from wi-fi. However if you walk down the street and accidentaly leave your wi-fi area, it works the other way, the call will be free untill you disconnect and make a new call.

UMA summary in the article seems kind of off...

[klaun (236494)]

The article linked to from the summary seems to speculate a little beyond the official press release [t-mobile.com] from T-Mobile.

Specifically T-Mobile says this will be available from your home Wi-Fi and from T-Mobile hotspots. It makes no mention of general availability from any WiFi location. The story author seems to speculate that this will be due to registration web pages and what-not. Based on my experience with UMA or DMS (Dual-Mode Service) technology and product offerings, I'm imagining the actual reason is E911. The company has to know an approximate location for your phone to supply to 911 dispatchers... Normal location base services (LBS) use antenna face and signal attenuation, or cell tower triangulation, or similar strategies. With WiFi, these don't work... so you need to know the location of the WAP. If it is a HotSpot... T-Mobile already knows and if it is your home WAP... You tell T-Mobile when you sign up for the service.

Also, these types of services do not use SIP (or MGCP or H.323 for that matter), they use GSM tunneled over IP. That is how the meshing is accomplished. The registration event for the GSM-o-IP service is where the MAC address for the WAP being connected to is supplied to the service provider for use with LBS (such as E911).

From the perspective of a user...

[cameronk (187272)]

I use this Hotspot@Home service and find it fantastic! T-mobile already offers the best customer service, now I have a cell tower in my bedroom...and free wifi roaming while overseas.

The Good
-WiFi call quality better than GSM
-WiFi-GSM hand-offs work well
-No minutes charged for calls started on WiFi and finished on GSM
The Bad
-Will not work with hotspots that require a web log-in (aside from T-mobile USA Hotspots)
-The bundled router does not support Mac OS X (to register you need to run a Windows-only application from a CD)
The Ugly
-The service currently works with only 2 very basic phones that even lack a web browser...even though high end devices like the Dash have wifi chipsets

Unlicensed mobile access, yawn...

[Renaud (6194)]

The underlying technology is most likely UMA : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlicensed_Mobile_Acc ess/ [wikipedia.org]
We've had offers based on this in Europe for over a year.

Very roughly speaking, this works by encapsulating GSM over IP+Wi-Fi. This is why handover between the GSM cell network and the Wi-Fi connection is possible at all : AFAIK, the phone still uses all the higher layers of GSM and the operator's usual servers on their GSM network. Your Wi-Fi access point is just another cell tower.

I personally see this technology as the "evil telecom world's" preferred way to add VoIP on a GSM phone (as opposed to the Internet world's plain old good SIP).

I'd much rather use a real GSM + SIP/Wi-Fi phone like my Nokia E65.

VoIP and GSM calls are perfectly integrated together, and using the SIP account associated with my landline (this is with the "Free" ISP in France), I can call and answer my home calls anywhere in the world exactly as if I were sitting in my sofa, and at the same rates, i.e. free for national calls and to around 30 countries

Re:

[crazyjeremy (857410)]

Here's a link to their promo site http://www.theonlyphoneyouneed.com/ [theonlyphoneyouneed.com]

Re:

[sycomonkey (666153)]

If you want to pay full price for the phone you do NOT have to sign a contract. I'm not familiar with T-mobile but this is true of every cell phone company I've ever dealt with (I used to sell Sprint and Verizon cell phones). This will generally make the person you are buying the phone from very sad, because they generally make way more money if you sign a contract, but it's not generally required.

The 10% lead the market

[athloi (1075845)]

As with anything technological, it seems to me, there's a 10% who explore and the rest settle for whatever is convenient and non-threatening. I'm interested in the 10%, because they'll forge the way for the rest............eventually.

Re:

[Lord Bitman (95493)]

Phone companies don't want to charge less for bandwidth, consumers don't want to be confronted with the fact that they're currently paying 1 cent per byte for some things.