Hard to believe but it was just over one year ago that I heard about the Tmobile@Home service and, unprepared, I walked into the Tmobile store and purchased my setup.
But alas, it’s been a full year of using the service and although I haven’t blogged enough on this site I know a lot of folks rely on this blog for information about the @Home service so I feel obligated to tell you my experience with it.
There are very few people who have had this service for as long as I have. Based on discussions with the Tmobile sales reps who I talked to right after I had purchased it, I’m pretty sure I was the first person in my area to take the plunge.
Before I keep rambling on, let me answer the question you probably want to know:
Am I happy I signed up for the Tmobile@Home service?
The answer is a very angry and tentative yes. Angry and tentative because the first month or so of the service I had the dreaded “blue light special” outage about once or twice per week. Then, after a service patch came out for the WRT54G-TM router, I applied it and didn’t lose service for months afterward. Now, this past month, I’m losing service constantly and have no idea why. And it’s not a simple matter of calling Tmobile Support because I know myself how to get the service back up and I seriously doubt that they can repair this intermittent outage problem. For all I know it could be my cable broadband provide, Comcast, who drive me “Comcastic” (not in good way).
This service is annoying at times, but I look at it this way:
I was paying $80 per month for phone service before. I’m now paying $10 per month. That is, in one year, a savings of $840. I’ll take plenty of inconvenience to save that much dough. I know there are a lot of people who would say that the savings isn’t worth the hassle or lack of piece of mind. If I were wealthy I’d agree with the hassle part, but I can’t agree with the lack of piece of mind theory since everyone who has this service has to have a cell phone and they can always use that if needed. Yeah I know – the 911 thing. I’ll take the risk.
But let me say this…as of today, while I’ve been a strong supporter of the Tmobile@Home service up to this point, I no longer recommend it. Not over the offerings that have popped up since (actually, right after I signed up for this service), like verizon or comcast’s bundled service. Note that I have no idea whether those services work any better, but I do know they’re more expensive.
Prior to a month ago I was a happy customer. This past month, it seems every other time I pick up the phone (which is not too often as I use my mobile phone usually), it is down. What is even worse is that often the blue light is still on on the router. It always takes a power cycle of the router followed by an ipconfig /release and renew and then a few minute wait before the blue light comes back and then service is restored. That’s just a real pain in the ass.
Next month I’m moving to a new house that already has Verizon FIOS installed. I’m looking at moving to Verizon FIOS for my television and internet service and it seems they have a special all the time going on where the phone is included. I may wind up going with that service and then evaluating both until next June when I can ditch the Tmobile@Home service (unless they sort out the issues finally).
Frankly, I’m not optimistic that any VOIP service is super-reliable yet, and I’ve said to folks repeatedly that the only reason it makes sense to use this service is because you always have the cell phone as the backup. Had it not been for the cell phone backup I’d have been *really* ticked and demanded a refund by now.
Incidentally, as I was typing this post I thought to look for an update to the LinkSys router firmware. What I found on the LinkSys site was the latest firmware, but it was v1.00.15. I checked my router’s Admin page and my firmware was v1.00.20. I recall sometime a while back that Tmobile automatically updated my firmware (they left a voicemail on the phone telling me to recycle the router, if I recall correctly,– it was kind of eerie, but cool). Out of curiosity I just ‘updated’ my firmware back to 1.00.15. My service is working for now. We’ll see if that helps it stay working.
I’m sad to have to write this post because, as I said, the first month was somewhat rocky but ever since it’s been great. But after this month….ugh!
Please tell us about your experience. Has your experience with it been similar to mine?
Update 06/29/2009 1:06PM EDT
I came home at noon today and needed to make a phone call and yet again, no phone service. Checked router and blue light was out this time. Cycled the router power, waited 5 minutes, refreshed and it was up again.
Interestingly, after having ‘downgraded’ my firmware yesterday to 1.00.15 and verifying that that was what was shown in the router Admin page, when I logged in today it was updated back to 1.00.20 – apparently Tmobile has remote access and automatically uses it!
On a positive note – this morning I received an email from a Comcast rep asking me to call their Support so they can check if the problem is on their end. I will try to do that later today and report back. So stay tuned!
Update 06/30/2009 6:23PM
I was in the middle of an important conference call from 4 to 6pm, listening to the conference call (muted from my end) when at about 4:45PM the phone went dead. Looked at the router and the blue light was on. Tried accessing the router’s admin page via http://192.168.0.1 and, like before, the router page simply wouldn’t load.
So I called into the conference call on my Tmobile mobile phone. When the conference call ended at 6PM, I decided I’d had enough of waiting for the phone issues to sort themselves out. I checked the phone again and, this time, I had a dial tone. So I tried dialing out but it would not dial out.
After searching in an endless loop on the Tmobile@Home Support page for an actual phone number to call, I gave up and did a google and found a discussion forum of folks complaining about the support, with a post from a guy saying to just dial 611. So I tried it and it worked – got connected right to an @Home support rep named “Rashad” (I’m certain I misheard or have the name misspelled – my apologies in advance if you are reading this!).
Rashad was pleasant and expedient and sounded very competent. I explained that my phone service has been dropping every day for a week now and the only thing that seems to fix it is to power cycle the router.
Rashad asked me which phone line (1 or 2) I had the SIM inserted into, to which I replied “line 1.” She then had me power cycle the router, and as expected, in about 3 minutes or so the blue light came back on and service was restored. She then had me take the SIM card out of the line 1 slot and put it in line 2, cycle the power to the router, wait the few minutes for the blue light to come on and then test the phone. I did, and service was working. She then initiated an inbound call to my @Home line and it worked.
She explained that she thinks the problem is either one of two things:
A. A bad SIM card or
B. A bad line 1 in the router
She took down my mobile phone number and the time (6:20PM) and said she will call me tomorrow at 6:20PM to see if the service is working. If it goes down between now and then, then she will get me a new SIM card to replace my existing one.
So that’s it for today. I was happy with Rashad and the level of support – she was quick and seems knowledgeable. Time will tell! I’ll update this post tomorrow with the outcome.
Update 07/01/2009 12:46PM
Just checked the phone. Got a dial tone (and of course the blue light is on), but can’t dial out and whenever someone dials me they get routed immediately to voicemail. I’m gonna power cycle the router just so I can receive calls for at least the next couple of hours (hopefully), but when Tmobile Support calls me at 6:20PM as they said they would, it looks like they’ll be ordering me a new SIM card. I can’t say I’m all that confident in that fixing the problem though…
Update 07/01/2009 6:40PM
As promised, the Tmobile Support rep “Rashad” (my cell phone is staticy in my basement so I’m sure I’m munging the name) called back tonight. She asked if the phone had gone down since yesterday when we last talked and I told her it did once and I had to power cycle the router.
So she had me go to this webpage and run the speed test:
I ran the test there and here were my results:
Note the quality of service was at 83% when I took the test this second time to grab the above screenshot for this post, but about 20 minutes ago when I performed it with Rashad, it was coming out at a much lower 67%. She said that anything below 85% is not good for VOIP. This tells me that the problem very well could be my broadband provider’s constantly fluctuating broadband service quality…Comcastic!
So then she had me try the VOIP Quality test, which can be found here:
Rashad started to go into about how the problem is my internet provider, which I countered with “I’ve had the same provider for a year and not had a problem with the @Home service until all of a sudden this week”. The last thing I am going to allow happen is let myself get stuck between a rock (Comcast) and a hard place (Tmobile) in terms of getting this problem fixed. I guess Rashad picked up on my slight discomfort so she backed off of trying to push it on my internet provider and said she wanted to troubleshoot the router (apparently she felt, unlike yesterday, that the problem had nothing to do with the SIM card). So she had me grab a paper clip and stick it into the red ‘reset’ button in the back of the router and hold it there for 20 seconds before releasing it. After a minute of the router lights flashing, my internet came back and a few minutes later the blue light for the VOIP came back.
She then had me go into the router admin page and set my wireless back to WPA Personal, change the SSID back to what I had it before, and put in my wireless password so my wireless devices would be able to reconnect.
So now it’s a waiting game to see if resetting the router will fix the problem. She said she is not going to be back in the office until late Sunday night and could call me at 11pm Sunday. I told her just wait until 7PM Monday so she’s set to call me then to find out if, during the next 5 days the @Home service goes down. If it does, she says she’s going to order me a new router.
We’ll see. I’d probably be a bit ticked at having to potentially deal with this for 5 days straight, having to power cycle the router at least once per day to keep my unstable phone service up, but the problem very well may be my broadband service and I don’t want to prematurely judge Tmobile for that. So, next update will either be Monday (hopefully), if the phone works fine through the weekend and it is determined that the router just needed resetting, or sooner if it goes down.
Have you ever had to reset your @Home router? This is the first time I’ve reset mine since owning it. Sucks cus I lose my port-forwarding that I had setup for P2P : (
UPDATE 07/02/09 4:10PM
Walked in the door to find out from my wife that our @Home phone is down yet again. Just like before, the blue light *is* visible and we do get a dial tone, but we can’t dial out and no one can call us. Sucks as I’m in for a long holiday weekend of power cycling my router at least once or twice a day : (
UPDATE 07/04/09 10:51PM
I’ve had to cycle my router’s power numerous times the past couple of days. From what I can guess, I get maybe 2 hours of actual working phone service before it goes down. And it’s insidious too – I still get a dial tone, but it won’t dial out or receive calls. I am not optimistic that a replacement router is going to fix the problem. If I were a betting man I’d say that they’re going to send out a new router, it won’t fix the problem, and then Tmobile will fall back on an excuse like it being Comcast’s fault. We’ll see.
No matter how this turns out…my one year review of the Tmobile@Home service is this:
Buyer beware. If you can live with numerous outages, often without you knowing the service is out, then by all means you can’t beat the $10 per month cost. But if you want reliable phone service then look elsewhere.
..now it’s time for me to sit and wait until the Tmobile Support Tech decides to come back from vacation and call me, so that she can order a new router. Ridiculous.
UPDATE 07/06/09 7:09PM
Just got off the phone with Rashad (pretty sure, after this many calls, that I have her name correct!). She is sending out the new router after I explained that I had to power cycle the router on Friday and Saturday to restore service, but it’s been working fine the past 2 days. Hmmm…..did Comcast notice my complaints on this blog and fix my service? Because all of a sudden, when I do the speed/quality test on my broadband I’m getting almost perfect service. Just ran it again and it’s a whopping 96%, as depicted here:
I’m starting to think that the problem has been Comcast all along and not Tmobile. To Tmobile Support’s credit, Rashad called back exactly when she said she would and was very friendly. Still kind of annoying that I had to be concerned with basic phone service all through the holiday weekend, but as I said, I’m starting to think I threw stones at Tmobile a little too quickly here. I’ll update this post again as I find out more.
But, if anything, at least my posts may help others who have had problems with their @Home service to troubleshoot – the myspeed.visualware.com test is very useful. I had no idea it existed or that the 85% QOS is the threshold that Tmobile (and probably other VOIP carriers) use to isolate issues between them and the broadband service.
UPDATE (2 minutes after I posted the last update!)
I just ran the speed test again, same server and everything, and my QOS measured out at 84%. This tells me that my broadband QOS is all over the map. Those of you with more knowledge on networking/voip – is this test legit, and do you agree that the problem is probably Comcast?
I won’t bother calling Comcast as I plan on cancelling their Craptastically expensive service at the end of this month when I move out of my current house and move into our new house which already has FIOS installed. I’d been holding off for years because Comcast had a monopoly on the local sports teams’ broadcasts, but Verizon carries em now so no need to eat shit from Comcast anymore. I can eat shit from Verizon now : ( (but cheaper). Just tested again and it came out at 97%. All over the place….
UPDATE 07/27/2009 10:18AM
Sorry I haven’t updated this post with the outcome. I’m in the middle of the sale/purchase of homes right now and moving has been my focus for the past few weeks. Stressful. Fortunately, @Home has not added to that stress since my last update.
Shortly after my last update I received the replacement router from T-Mobile Support as they had promised. But I haven’t even bothered opening up the package because my @Home service has been working fine for the past few weeks now, and as I stated before I’m fairly certain the problem was with Comcast’s horrible connection. Why do I think that? Because the speed and QOS service tests linked above are all over the place. One minute they’re good and the next they’re bad. Next week I *should* (that’s a whole ‘nother story) be getting Verizon FIOS installed and as of this Thursday I will be returning all of my Craptastic gear (HD boxes, cable modem, etc.) to my local Comcast office and cancelling the service.
Many years ago (about 9 to be exact) I had internet service through a broadband provider named @Home – NO RELATION TO T-Mobile’s @Home service! What a coincidence. They were the first big broadband provider in my area. Their service sucked in terms of constant ‘lag’ and ups/downs. But it beat the shit out of 56kbps! Shortly after I started using @Home (the broadband, not the phone!) service Comcast bought them out. The service got a little better but not great. Back then I played online multiplayer games, so when service would ‘lag’ or drop I’d know it right away. It was really annoying to be playing Medal of Honor Allied Assault multiplayer, running up on a German enemy and right before I gun them down my connection would slow down…
Flash forward to today. A new online multiplayer game is out named Battlefield Heroes and it’s awesome. Why? Cus it’s just like the Medal of Honor game I liked so many years ago. I haven’t played games since that Medal of Honor one as I’m not much of a gamer, but something about these war games I like. Twisted?
Anyways….guess what? Since starting to play that game, I’ve noticed my Craptastic Comcast broadband service lags constantly. Things haven’t changed it seems over the years. Comcast sucks and I’ll be glad to be rid of them once and for all.
Back to the T-Mobile@Home service….I’ve packed away the replacement router that their Support rep sent me. It includes a return shipment box, so when I get to the new house and finally get around to setting up my new office (gonna buy a new desk and set it all up right, so no rushing it!) I’ll go ahead and use the new router but I don’t think it will matter. Only reason I’m going to switch to the new one is because the Support rep told me I have to send back the ‘defective’ one and they included return postage/packaging with the replacement one they sent me, so if I don’t send it back they’ll probably bill me for it eventually.
After a solid month of using @Home with FIOS I’ll post an update as to how it works, including some screenshots of the speed/QOS results with that connection. I’m signed up for the FIOS 25/15 service, which cost a bit more but is worth it to me (we’ll see…).
32 Comments
Hello!
I read your blog post. Our team would be happy to check out your connections to see if we’re causing the problems with your phone. Email us. We’re here to help.
Kind Regards,
Melissa Mendoza
Comcast Customer Connect
National Customer Operations
We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com
@ComcastMelissa
Hi, nice post. I have had @home for about 6 months and have never lost service, other than my own doing. I have FIOS, and I think that makes the difference. I have read a lot of complaints and they all have one thing in common, Comcast (or other coax broadband provider). I am in no position to say that Comcast is truly the problem, but I can tell you that with FIOS I have never suffered a single blue-light outage for no reason (of course now that I write this I am ready for murphy!!) I hope you have more success when you move to FIOS.
One other thing, I do have to say that I am slightly annoyed that my router was force upgraded without my knowledge. If the upgrade is all for the good, and there is language in the contract that says they can do it whenever they want, then great, but hey, at least send me an email, tell me it is going to happen and make me feel good about it by telling me all the great new and improved things this new firmware has in it.
Hi Kevin,
Yeah I am definitely looking forward to ditching Comcast. As in the previous comment left by the Comcast employee (and that is much appreciated), I should call Support and let them check things out but I am more annoyed with my cable bill so I’m just gonna let Tmobile change out the SIM card (per my last update to this post) and wait until July 31 when I move into our new house with FIOS. Reminds me…I gotta schedule that FIOS “turn on”!
In regards to the auto-updating. I can tell you that the Tmobile Support rep told me that she could login to my router remotely and see all of the settings I had in there. That’s a bit scary but makes sense I guess. And when I was auto-updated to 1.00.20 the first time (sometime last year I think), I did have a voicemail on my @Home phone saying that they either did or were going to do it, and that I may need to power cycle the router. It was kind of eerie. No mention of what 1.00.20 “enhances” and, mysteriously, you cannot download it yourself – it is not available from either Tmobile or LinkSys websites – if you go to their download page all you’ll see is 1.00.15 and very quickly after pushing that downgraded firmware version to your router Tmobile somehow automatically senses it and force-updates it to 1.00.20. I have a suspicion that the 1.00.20 version of the firmware does nothing but provide Tmobile complete remote access to your router settings, though I’m just speculating here…
mark
I think the problem is largely to do with Comcast and I really don’t see what their incentive is to fix it. I had a 3mb DSL line with AT&T and could never get consistent VOIP service. When AT&T upgraded the area to Uverse, I added Tmobile’s @Home VOIP and not a single problem. AFAIK, nothing changed but the quality of the broadband connection.
My sense is it’s about time for the feds to come in and say look … if you provide broadband service, you must provide a high enough quality connection 99.999% of the time that the subscriber can support 64k bps VOIP without any hiccups. This allows us to comfortably buy on price and not be concerned with whether our broadband provider will jack the connection after we’ve already signed a contract either with them or the VOIP provider.
Honestly, if I were in their shoes I’d make sure that VOIP didn’t work well if I had a competing product. Not because I’m a mean, nasty person, but because it just makes good business sense not to improve performance to the point that people can ditch my voice service. This is one thing the pure free market people don’t get: when real world examples come up, we see how companies have you enough by the balls that you don’t have anywhere to go and not enough real competition to do anything about it. That’s why utilities were regulated for so long and why broadband should be regulated as well. IMNSHO.
Ralph
I have had this home phone service since almost the beginning also (so for about a year) and I have had nothing but problems with it. Our first service provider was AT&T Uverse and we were re-setting the TMobile router about 4 times a week. Then, we moved to a new house and got Charter (a branch of Comcast) and still have been re-setting this router at least 4-5 times per week as we lose phone service.
T-Mobile sent me a new router which has been even worse. I am lucky if service sticks around for even a few hours. I am having to re-set it (and by that I mean unplugging and re-plugging it back in) at least 2-3 times per day when I notice that it is down. I called TMobile to ask to get out of the contract since I have not had reliable service from day one and they wouldn’t let me out of it. So after demanding to talk to supervisors, I finally got someone who seemed knowledgable in the @home technical service dept. He ordered me yet another new router which I received yesterday. This is a different type of router, it is all black and does not have wireless as a feature. I am not happy about this. The @Home rep assured me this router would work better than the last type.
I am supposed to be getting a call from this rep in about 30 minutes to walk me through getting the new router set up, but without the wireless feature, I do not want this router as that was another perk of the @home service. So he will have to send me yet another one that has the wireless feature that also works for my phone service.
Overall, I would not recommend this service to anyone. I have had nothing but issues. I am needing this service to be reliable as I work from home a few days a week and TMobile has not shown they can provide reliable service. Of course all the reps I talk to at TMobile who have this service love theirs and have never had any issues. I would like to trade routers with them and see if that is in fact the issue.
My father who is in a different state and has the @home service has also had the same issues as I have. He is on his 3rd router and is finally having a bit better luck with it. I have yet to get there…and I am about to go postal on TMobile over these issues.
Melissa,
Did you try the speed test links in my post? I’m interested to know what your Quality of Service score is? Please try it and report back to us.
Thanks,
mark
Quality of service score was 49% that I just ran. I am connected wirelessly, do I need to run it while hard-wired to the modem or is wireless sufficient?
Hi Melissa,
That 49% is super low and probably due to the wireless but I’m not sure. Try it hard-wired. Run it a few times (only takes a few minutes to run it a few times) to see if it changes much. Also, don’t do anything else via the internet while you’re doing it (ie, don’t use your @Home phone or surf the web or download updates, etc, while running it).
If it remains that low then that tells me it’s your cable connection and not the @Home service/router. But I think the problem is probably that you ran it via wireless. I just ran mine via wireless and it came back at 52%.
mark
I have been on the phone all day with tmobile and they have blamed everything but themselves. I have had mine for a month and just since the latest firmware it has never caused problems. Now it won’t stay on for more than a few minutes without loosing connection. I wouldn’t doubt if it’s a planned thing to get people to use thier cell phones more. By the way, I had Comcast phone service and it never let me down once in a year. I wish I could get rid of this tmobile headache and go back.
Ron,
Did you try the QOS/speed test discussed above? I’d be interested to hear what you are getting.
I wouldn’t give Comcast a pass on this. I wouldn’t be surprised if they throttle the VOIP bandwidth – negatively for competitors’ VOIP service and positively for their own.
That said…I don’t understand why you can’t cancel? Yes, there is a 2-year contract, but if the service isn’t working then have you demanded a cancellation? I would.
Mark,
. The other tests all come in good. Download is usually arround 2.5 Mbps, upload 1.5 Mbps and the packet loss is 0 and jitter 3. I’m just curious why the Tmobile at home did so good for 3 weeks then has gone downhill in the last week and a half.
I did the test and the qos test is usually arround 50%, sometimes as high as 75%, and somtimes in the teens
My friend has Qwest DSL and I had him test it and his qos was 99%, upload 1.3Mbps, and 750kbps up. I am thinking about giving Comcast the boot and try my other alternatives. Maybe its not Tmobile that is causing the trouble but Tmobile has a 2 week trial period and after that your stuck with the contract. This thing worked fine for 3 weeks then went to crap. Imagine that, how convenient.
FWIW – I think since either .15 or .16 Firmware T-Mobile can automatically push updates. Most likely they do this as a vast majority probably either a) have no clue, b) have a clue or afraid to do it or c) know what to do and how to do it, but just forget.. The rest of us… ehh.. I’m in Silver Spring w/FiOS and got 99% (really what do you need to do to get 100%?). Also, .20 firmware wasn’t pushed out until around June 16th I think it was… Although I don’t disagree that .20 might be a bit buggy.. I’ve had a few more issues then usual the last few weeks..
I have 2.4 GHZ cordless phones and started experiencing poor/degraded call quality and no outgoing calls since past long weekend. Power cycle of router, change SIM location on router didn’t help. Contacted tech support few hours ago and as per them, disconnected all 2.4GHz cordless phones and connected one corded phone. No issues till now. Tmobile suggests to use a 5.38 GHz, 900MHz or a DECT 6.0 cordless phone for improved call quality.
link to TMobile online support:
https://support.t-mobile.com/doc/tm23771.xml?
I have had t-mobil home for a year and just love it. Think it is wonderful never have had a bit if trouble and I am not one that as a rule has a easy time with modern gadgets. I wouldn’t part with it. 77 year old senior.
I’m thinking about getting Tmobile@home and after doing some research I might not go that route. Seems most of the problems are with the wireless routers. I already have a wireless router and don’t want to change it. I’ve seen on the Tmobile@home demo site that you can use their adapter with your wireless router. Cable modem to Tmoble@home adapter to your own wireless router to your pc. Has anyone had issues with using the adapter? Link to that adapter http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/phones/Cell-Phone-Detail.aspx?cell-phone=T-Mobile-@Home-HiPort-adapter
David,
For what it’s worth…
I don’t feel the router is a problem. The problem is the broadband providers not providing quality bandwidth/service. I just switched to Verizon FIOS (from Comcast) last week and so far my @Home service has been rock steady. With Comcast the visualware Quality of Service test scores were varying wildly between 50% and 90%. With FIOS the lowest score I’ve gotten was an 83% one time and I’ve tested numerous times now. Tmobile says that a QOS score of 85% or higher is needed to have good @Home service. I’ve never had a problem with the router. IN fact, per a previous post, Tmobile thought the problem was a router with my service and sent me a new one, but I never took it out of the box because once I switched to FIOS my problems seem to have disappeared. Hopefully permanently, but only time will tell.
That said…if you rely on your landline heavily then I don’t recommend @Home or any VOIP service. But you have to remember that, in order to get @Home, you have to already have a cell phone plan with Tmobile. So you will always have a backup. So for normal personal use I think the cost savings are worth the possible hassle. But I feel bad for anyone who relies on VOIP for business use….
mark
mark
As I understand it the difference may be in the architecture of the services. DSL is a dedicated line direct to the CO then aggregated and piped out to the internet. While Comcrap installs nodes that they hook multiple acconts to then that is uploaded. DSL claims thats where they are superior because those nodes become saturated with traffic and bandwidth suffers, especially if one of the users is downloading big files. IDK but if that is the issue then Comcraps VOIP phone service would suffer the same as Tmobiles. Unless CC is shaping bandwidth to guarantee their VOIP service a minimum level of service.
harrym,
I don’t see why Comcrap *wouldn’t* throttle bandwidth to give their VOIP service an advantage. I don’t know if they do or not but I do recall reading some things about them throttling back P2P data transfers. I also know that at my employer I have been having discussions recently about their installing internal VOIP service for our webinars and my concern with bandwidth availability and he said that they can easily throttle it so that it takes precedence over other traffic. So it’s certainly possible if not probably that Comcast does it. I had this concern about Verizon FIOS but I’ve had the service for a week now with the @Home running on it and it’s been flawless so far.
mark
I’m considering a switch to TMobile @Home. It would save us around $30-35/mth. My research led me to this site and these comments.
In testing my AT&T-provided DSL connection using the site referenced in this blog, my QOS was always 86-98% at a variety of locations. And that was using wi-fi on my end. Probably encouraging results since a lot of the negative experience seems, at times, to be related to poor QOS in the baseline internet connection.
Horsts,
Sounds like @Home should work well for you. Just one other thing to keep in mind – there is no faxing ability with @Home. I use online fax services and/or just scan/pdf/email in place of analog faxing but apparently some folks still prefer the old style machines, so if you’re one of them then this service isn’t for you. Also, and to that end, in my opinion NO ONE should be running their business phone through an @Home connection, in the event you’re one of the unlucky ones. Keep that 2 year contract in mind.
Warnings aside….if your QOS is that high/stable and you’re not planning on doing anything tricky (ie, piggy-backing routers, faxing, etc.) then you should be good.
One last thing – you mention you have DSL. I had DSL too but when I cancelled the phone service Verizon charged me an extra $10 per month to have ‘dry loop’ DSL, hence the reason I switched to Crapcast cable modem (fortunately now I’m on FIOS in my new house).
Good luck and report back how it works for you.
mark
Thanks for the feedback.
I actually need to keep a land line to accomodate our alarm system, but it will only cost $7.28 plus basic taxes — no features, no long distance, etc. It won’t get much use at all. Given the location of everything in our house, I can’t figure out a practical way not to retain this line.
No need for fax. And, not running a business out of the house.
Beware of tmobile at home service. I have had the service for over 6 months & it has been terribly inconsistent. The service goes down often. When I unplug the tmo hi port adapter & plug it back in, the blue light service does comes back. So for $10 a month, you probably get what you pay for, but it has simply become a nuisance. A call to tmo at home tech support offered no help, they simply blamed AT&T & offered technical mumbo jumbo about jitters & blah blah, things never mentioned when you sign up………they only tell you unlimited service for $10. I am not impressed & the service is unreliable. Wish had not signed a 2 year contract.
Again, and I hate to sound like I’m a T-Mobile fanboy here, but I have to make it clear that @Home has been working perfectly for me, with 100% uptime, ever since I changed broadband providers to a quality broadband connection.
The problem is the broadband providers do not give quality service, and even when they do, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them throttle back any bandwidth being used by a competitor’s VOIP service….
mark
I have had the at home service since November of last year. At first the service was terrible until I got the patch. Then I started having lots of intermittent problems. Called and dgt transferred around a lot. Had to call Linksys and they referred me back to T-mobile. After 6 months I demanded a new router as it was covered under warranty. They sent someone’s used router and didn’t even try to clean it up. I was told there was not charge, and then lo and behold a $20 charge ended up on my next bill. Had to call and they removed it saying it was shipping costs. Most of the time it works but about once per month for a few hours it drops calls and the blue light goes out.
Hello!
What are the terms of the T Mobile @home contract?
When I signed up, it was a 2 year contract and I remember the early termination fees (ETF) to be on a sliding scale.
I am not sure of the exact numbers, but it was something like, if you cancel within the first year, ETF is $200; cancel between 13 months to 18 months, ETF is $100; cancel between 18 months to 24 months, ETF is $50.
I have moved recently and cannot find my contract to confirm the above.
My cell phone contract is over, and wanted to buy out the remainder of my @home contract, but T-Mobile customer service keeps insisting the ETF is $200 irrespective of when I cancel during the 2 year period.
Can someone help by posting the contract terms.
Thanks in advance!
Do you want out of your contract just because you are changing cell providers, or are you unhappy with the @Home service? If it is the latter, I would just call up and if they can’t fix it and it isn’t a problem with your ISP (ie, QOS is lower than 85% threshold) or it isn’t an issue with your setup (ie, then you’re trying to piggyback 3 routers, doing all kinds of port/setting changes, etc.), then make em fix it. If they can’t they gotta let you out of the contract.
Mark,
Thanks for your response.
I want to change cell providers as the cell coverage at my new place after I moved is very bad. T-Mobile Cell does not work in my office building at all, while my colleagues with AT&T, Verizon have no problems.
I am out of my cell contract, but am tied to the @Home contract.
Do you have the terms of your @Home contract?
I have T-Mobile at Home for three months and has been nothing but trouble with At&T U-Verse & Linkys Router. I finally found the solution to losing the blue light on the Linkys Router. The correct router is the Linkys UTA200-TM HIPort non-wireless designed fot U-Verse users. Also the Linkys router and the AT&T RG 3800 Gateway should be both set in DMZ mode. You shouls also speak to AT&T Tech Support to determine if any errors are present and set the RG Gateway to router to router. You have to give them consent to take over your computer to search for errors.
I think the biggest problem is the internet connection. I have cable based roadrunner in se wiconsin. They have static IP addressing which means every time the cable modem powers up it is assignmed an avaible ip address to your location. A friend, a computer fronsic investigator told me to depower my cable modem at least once a month so it is reassgned a new static ip address, and it helped all with all my networks problems, even before Voice OverIP. Cable phone dones not use the internet until it get to the main server hub which a roadrunner tech told me, aned is not affected by local ip traffic. I have Vonage and when the call waiting is activated, it slows my computer connecting to the net.The Vonage rate went up to 17.99 from 14.99 and considering T moble home phone for 10.00. I have t moble cells service intially it sucked 4years ago , but is very good now.
I’m a cable technician for cox communications. If you’re having a problem with internet service, it’s most likely the signal level to your modem. You can log into any cable modem by opening up internet explorer and typing http://192.168.100.1 in the address bar. Once it pops up, click around to find what your signal is. Your Transmit/Upstream (Tx) levels should optimally be between 40 and 48. Your Receiving/Downstream (Rx) levels should be between -8 and +5. Also, your SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) should be above 34db. If your levels aren’t in this spec, your internet will run sluggish and crappy. If out of this optimal spec, you will need to have a cable technician come out to adjust the levels to the modem.
We have had t-mobile home phone for over a year and have had great service. The time we had trouble with it was when we switched from att home service to t-mobile and they forgot to put what they call a “dry loop”. Great service. The only thing I don’t know if you can fax from this service.