I moved this past July to a new house that previously had FIOS installed. I was pretty thrilled with the prospect of getting off of Comcast and moving to Verizon FIOS.

It’s been almost 4 months now since first switching to FIOS for my internet and TV, and as much as it pains me to say it….I would switch back to Comcast if I could.

First off, let me say this: Comcast’s broadband internet service is unstable, has a very poor Quality of Service (QOS) level – so poor that it makes 3rd-party VOIP services, like T-Mobile@Home, more trouble than it’s worth. But, and this is a big BUT, the TV services, while not great and filled with its own set of issues, is so much better than FIOS’s TV service that I’d switch back in a heartbeat.

TV Video Quality

The video quality is probably a bit better with FIOS. Of course, there’s NO WAY anyone can really compare that with any real measure unless they subscribed to both services at the same time and had two different televisions side-by-side. FIOS seems to have more HD channels and an overall nicer picture. Some things are clearly superior, like HBO. On Comcast, I had 11 channels of HBO, and only one came in in HD. The rest was SD. On FIOS, all 11 channels are in HD.

User Interface/Menu System

The biggest problem with FIOS is the TERRIBLE user interface/menu system. I can’t say enough just how horrible it is. Comcast’s was WAY better. From the goofy categorizations of channels that FIOS has, to the slow response of the box, it is just horrible compared to Comcast. And let’s face it, the user interface is a big part of the service. My wife still hasn’t figured out how to use the damn thing, but she has trouble working the toaster too…

Remote Control

The Comcast remotes suck. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse….Verizon outdoes them with the suckiest remote of all time! The remote is very ‘mushy’ in feel and the box is just slow to respond. It’s just flat-out annoying. And that along with the horrible menu system makes it just annoying at best.

Example: a couple of weeks ago I was on the internet when I got word that the remake of The Prisoner was finally coming on TV. So I go to my TV and make sure to schedule the series to record (more on the shitty DVR later). Problem is, there’s no way that I can find to jump from day to day, to record a future show. You have to manually keep pushing the right-arrow button on the remote and go through every half-hour increment between the present time and when the first instance of the show starts. It’s horrible! On Comcast’s remote there were DAY+ and DAY- buttons, so if a show was 7 days away I just had to hit it 7 times and bam, I’m there. Comcastic! : )

DVR

The DVR has, at best, only half of the capacity that the Comcast one had. Before, we’d never run out of space. Now, we have to clean it out fairly often. Other than that, the DVR works for the most part.

Customer Service

Yeah, this is what I hated most about Comcast. I am definitely not ‘Comcastic!’ about their customer service. And, like the remote controls, just when I thought customer service couldn’t get worse, Verizon gives Comcast a run for the money! Analyzing/discussing the quality level between Comcast and Verizon’s customer service is like debating morality amongst prostitutes, so I’ll leave it at that. They both suck. Of course, I had some extra holes in my basement walls from the moron that FIOS sent out to install the service and run the cables. They at least eventually made it somewhat right and patched it. They had to come back multiple times to get it done, and I’ll have to touch-up paint it. Morons.

Cost

They both charge way too much.

Internet

The Comcast internet service is laggy at times, which is a big problem if you play Battlefield Heroes like me, the QOS is bad, which is a big problem if you have a 3rd-party VOIP service like I have, and the speed is not what they claim it to be. Verizon FIOS kicks ass in the internet department. I’ve not had a single outage, have not had to reboot a router once, have never experienced any lag, and my Tmobile@Home service has been rock-solid and not a single issue since I moved to FIOS.

Summary

Both of these companies suck ass and treat their customers like garbage. Because my wife/kids watch a lot of TV I’d probably switch back to Comcast if I could (I’m in a 2-year deal with Verizon). But I’d hate to give up the internet service.

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:

 myspeed.visualware.com

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:

myvoipspeed.visualware.com

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…).

http://www.fixya.com/support/t1043931-vtech_model_tm3111_2_time

…where people are saying that their voicemails are stamped with the incorrect time. Easy enough fix. I never noticed because I might have set the time to EST right when I first checked out the router’s Admin settings.

“Hello! This is T-Mobile. We have sent an update to your @Home router. Please reset your router in order for the update to take effect.”

I’m paraphrasing, but that was the basic gist. I had no idea that T-Mobile was able to ‘push’ an update direct. That’s kind of freaky, actually. I’m not one of those privacy nuts so I’ll take the convenience when I can get it. I’m just surprised.

Has anyone else received this message before I wonder what the update/patch is? I’m going to go ahead and reset the router and see…

T-Mobile @Home HiPort adapter

My 2-year contract with T-Mobile for mobile phone usage is up this February. I’m on the ‘Family Talk 1000′ plan, so my wife and I both have a phone with a shared pool of 1000 minutes (it cost me $49.95 total for both phones and has been great for us).

The one thing I never liked though is the Samsung phones we picked out. For one, we made the big mistake of each picking the same phone and same color. And my wife is too lazy to check her wallpaper before picking up a phone and leaving the house so invariably she takes my phone…

Anyways…so I was looking at T-Mobile’s website for phones and stumbled upon this thing:

Here is the link with the details:

http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/phones/Cell-Phone-Detail.aspx?tp=tb1&cell-phone=T-Mobile-@Home-HiPort-adapater

I didn’t know this existed! I wish it existed when I had purchased the service, as I scrapped a fairly new D-Link Wireless N router for the T-Mobile@Home/LinkSys wireless G router. While the LinkSys router works great and gives a strong signal, I was bummed that I had to ‘downgrade’ to the G standard. Since my wife is the one using the wifi mostly, and she runs Ubuntu linux, and when I use the wireless it is with my G-card, work-supplied, Dell laptop, the N was a waste anyways.

I’m surprised T-Mobile is going this route, as it seems to me at this point it’s still pretty early in their foray into VOIP and they might want to stick with the tried-and-true before venturing into allowing other routers (and the settings/customizations/issues that may bring their Support folks). On the other hand, it tells me that the service is probably working great for 99% of people and T-Mobile figures they may as well offer this instead of forcing people to buy a wireless G router, knowing that a lot of folks will insist on ‘piggy-backing’ their existing router anyway.

But, my ramblings aside – has anyone reading this used the HiPort adapter instead of the LinkSys router? If so, have you had any service issues? Please share your experiences with it.

Of course, in addition to the $9.99, there are high taxes with any telecommunications service in America.

As I tell everyone who emails me asking, “How much is the bill going to be, EXACTLY, with taxes? I don’t want any surprises and I don’t need the haSsLe of having to revert back to my old carrier!!”

After I respond first with something like, “Dude…put the attitude in check and go easy with the demands for info…I don’t work for and never have worked for T-Mobile (and probably never will, but if they need my part-time freelance services I’m happy to provide for fee!). This blog is not an official @Home info center and is not condoned or authorized by T-Mobile. I *do* know they read it, because I somehow got added to their @Home press release page. And I am on their ‘press release’ spam list (but none of it has to do with the @Home service so far). So I’m doing a favor by responding to the info requests.

That said….I pay exactly $12.44 per month for the T-Mobile@Home service. That’s of course in addition to my mobile “Family Plan 1000″, which I pay $39.99 per month plus an extra $10 for a second phone.

I live in Pennsylvania, so the taxes are guaranteed to be different for you unless you live in Pennsylvania too.

But, for details, here is the breakdown:

Monthly Recurring Charges

- Additional Line*          $9.99
- Enhanced Voicemail    $0.00
- Home Calling FT Unl   $0.00

Taxes, Fees and Surcharges

-Government Fees and Taxes
- State Gross Receipts Tax    $0.54
- State Sales Tax                   $0.05
- State 911                            $1.00
- Regulatory Programs Fee    $0.86

TOTAL: $12.44

* it says “Additional Line” on my bill, but I only have one @Home line. The other line(s) are my mobile numbers I guess.

So there you have it. As you can see, my state government is the one charging me most of the taxes. Your mileage WILL vary.

Last week my T-Mobile@Home service dropped 3 times in a matter of 4 days. Each day that it happened it happened sometime in the morning. As previously discussed, to fix it I had to cycle power to the router.

Well, last week after the last time it happened I was convinced that the problem was the router not being able to handle my ISP (Comcast Cable) changing my IP address periodically (like most home users with cable or DSL, the IP address is dynamically assigned and often changed by the ISP to ensure we won’t run a home server or P2P service from our basements/bedrooms : ).

So I recorded my IP address after the last service drop and have been monitoring it since. Also, the other day, as you probably know, Linksys released a firmware upgrade for the @Home router.

Well….it seems to have worked for me so far. I checked my IP address today and it has been changed by my ISP. And my service has not gone down. So, either my theory about the IP address being the problem was wrong, or I just got lucky this one time, or the firmware update fixed the problem.

How about you? Have you had any issues/service drops since upgrading the firmware?

I advise everyone to install the firmware update.

Special thanks goes out to Alex for letting me know it was available. I had just checked LinkSys’s site this past Monday hoping for an update, so I’m happy to see LinkSys/T-Mobile (I assume they were involved in this update?) are working to enhance the router so that we can avoid the blue light special : )

From Alex:

Hey there, just wanted to point out to you and your commenters that Linksys released a new version of the firmware for the WRTU54G-TM today: v1.00.09. It is available here: http://tinyurl.com/5×8o48 Perhaps the aforementioned T-mobile CSR was referring to this update as a “new model”.

I did download and install it; everything seems to work fine. One big feature they added is the ability to assign static IP addresses by MAC address, which was previously lacking

Once you install the firmware update, PLEASE leave a comment here about your experience!

I remember thinking that the problem might be something with my cable modem service and whenever it changes IP addresses. Perhaps the router wasn’t automatically reconnecting for some reason? I’m good with PC hardware and software, but networking has never been my strong suit, so if anyone has any clarifications/additional info on this problem please let me (us) know.

Anyways…

So of course this morning my wife yells down to me while I was working from home (at the same desk with the @Home router) and informs me that the phone is not working. Not a big deal for us since we just use our cell phones. So this time I decide I’m going to try the old ‘ipconfig /release and renew’ trick (it’s about the only networking command I know, and seems to have solved everything over the years…). But first, I cycled the power to the router itself (not the cable modem too, like I had done in the past). No luck – still no blue light/service. So then I went into the Windows command prompt and typed:

ipconfig /release

Then, after it does its thing, I typed in:

ipconfig /renew

Bingo. A few seconds later and the blue light is back and service is restored.

In case you were wondering….yes, I am still very happy with the service. Do I like every once in a while having an outage? No. And I never would recommend this service (or any VOIP service) to anyone who doesn’t have a cell phone too. But we have to keep in mind that the Tmobile@Home service is still quite new and I’m confident they’ll get the bugs worked out, eventually. Until then, say it with me:

ipconfig /release

ipconfig /renew

Ahhh……it’s the solution to everything network related it seems! : )

Seriously though – how about a check in from everyone who follows this blog – do you regret your decision to sign up for the service? So far I’ve seen a lot of complaints but it’s been because of things that, quite frankly, I don’t get. Like, ‘my fax machine doesn’t work’ (why would someone in 2008 need a fax machine? Isn’t that what scanners and eFax are for?).

Notice the 'Phone' link in the sub-navigation

While not really a ‘feature’, the above screen just shows you whether your SIM card(s) (there are slots for two in the router) are inserted and registered.

The one ‘feature’ related to the phone capabilities is the call log. You can see in the screenshot above the button to access it. This is what it looks like:

I crossed out the phone numbers I dialed....to protect the innocent!

Note that the call log gets cleared out anytime you reset the router. Today I did notice that the blue light on the router was not on. I have heard reports of this from others. I picked up the handset and had no dial tone, so I unplugged the router, waited a minute, then plugged it back in. After the router initialized, the blue light was back and service was back. I have no idea how long the service was down, but I estimate an hour or two. Hopefully Tmobile gets the kinks worked out. I’m still happy with the service, but I’m certainly glad I have a cell phone to fall back on, which all @Home customers would have to have or else they wouldn’t be able to get the service in the first place. So, for $10, it’s still a good deal even with the occasional hiccup.