“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.

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.

I did have one person email me saying that they were getting constant drops in service – ie, the blue light on the router that indicates that phone service is working, would go out for them sometimes. They sent me a couple of links to some discussions where other folks are having issues too:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20706463-TMobileHome-Review~start=40

http://forums.linksys.com/linksys/board/message?board.id=VoIP_Routers&message.id=2803

Based on my experience thus far with the service and the router, I’m leaning towards the problem these folks are having being due to their internet service provider. But that’s purely a guess. Incidentally – I have not even bothered to look on TMobile’s site for new firmware and couldn’t tell you what version my router’s firmware is using. I’ll knock on wood and hope to not have to look anytime soon, as I won’t bother upgrading unless I can foresee a real benefit or am having trouble.

I wanted to give a half-thumbs up to Tmobile’s customer service, and a full thumbs-up to Verizon’s. Yesterday afternoon I called Tmobile to begin the process of porting my Verizon-based landline number to the @Home service. It took me 3 calls to get to the person who could actually do the porting. The first time I called I got a lady who told me she couldn’t do it (even though the automated ‘how can I help you?’ voice asked me what I needed done, and I told it that I wanted to ‘port a number’, and it correctly responded by repeating what I wanted to do). So the lady doesn’t transfer me, she gives me a phone number to call. An 800 number that, it turns out, is disconnected!

So I call back and this time I get transferred….and after a few seconds I got hung up on. So I call back and the third time I get a friendly fellow who I explained what I was trying to do. He apologized profusely and said he could take care of the porting for me. I explained the situation – that I currently have Verizon DSL and phone, and I want to port my landline phone @ to @Home. A bell went off in my  head as I explained it to him, and before I could say, “Oh Shit!” to myself, he said to me – “Sir, I’m happy to port your number but if we do you may lose your DSL and, with it, your new @Home service will be useless!”

Amazingly, I completely forgot about this little detail : ( It is was kept me from trying Vonage all these years.

So I do some googling and find out about something called “dry loop DSL” – where you can get DSL without having to have a landline number. But every single shred of info on it on the web was a blog post from people complaining that Verizon either was telling them it wasn’t possible but was, or that it would be difficult to get them to agree to do it. I was prepared to dump Verizon DSL and go with, ugh, Comcast broadband (I may still do it….see below why).  So, with much trepidation, I called Verizon and explained the situation. To my surprise, the Verizon rep said to me (paraphrased): “Not a problem sir. What you’re trying to do is called dry loop DSL and we can do that for you. Hold on and let me verify that it will automatically switch over for you.” I had not mentioned the term ‘dry loop’ thinking I’d get someone who would have no clue. But this guy had a clue and was cool. He checked with his superiors to ensure that, once my phone number was ported, that I would automatically be switched to a dry loop dsl line, and they said yes that I’m all set.

So, in 6 to 10 days I’ll be switched over to @Home fully and will be better able to evaluate the service.

The one downside to ‘dry loop dsl’ is that my DSL bill is going up $12 to $41.95 per month, which sucks. I get a rock-solid 2.8mbps down and 700kbps up through this DSL service that I’ve had for about 5 years now. I originally had Comcast cable broadband when I moved into my current house and it was terrible – constant lag/drops, and even full days at a time with no email or, worse, no internet access at all. I finally got fed up and switched to Verizon DSL and have loved it – I can only remember one outage and it was for about 8 hours one day, and they proactively credited us for it. Comcast would do no such thing.

But now, Comcast is offering an ‘up to 6mbps’ broadband deal currently for $19.95 for 6 months, and then $42.95. Also, they’re offering $42.95 off the bat (ie, no discount for 6 months) for their alleged 12mbps service. If I was confident that I’d actually get those results and the service would be reliable, I’d go for it in a heartbeat.  But I do a lot of work from home as a web developer and the last thing I can tell my clients is, “Sorry I didn’t get that file to you faster – my internet was down…” when they’re looking to me to help them with server setups and the like! If anyone has any opinion on Comcast broadband in the Southeastern Pennsylvania area, I’d love to hear it.

11/02/2008 NOTE: After I originally wrote this post a few months ago, T-Mobile linked to it from their t-mobileathome.com site. This has resulted in a huge number of emails/comments on the posts I’ve written about the service. While I appreciate T-Mobile linking to my blog, as all the links/hits I get drives traffic to my site and the small (very small) amount of money I make from the clicked-on ads and such help defray server costs, I want to make it clear that I have no affiliation with T-Mobile whatsoever and receive nothing from them (and never have), other than the services I’ve paid for.

I usually don’t mix personal posts on this blog, but it’s the only blog I have right now going, and well, this is a topic that people are really interested in it seems. There are very few folks who have actually signed up for the new Tmobile@Home service (I’m guessing this because so few people have info on the web about it). So, in the interest of sharing info back to the web community….here I go…

Yesterday afternoon I went to my local Tmobile store to sign up for the @Home service. I am currently paying over $60 per month for my Verizon landline, so I figured if I could get 99% up-time from this new @Home service for just $10 per month, it would be worth it. So I signed up, which took a while because, as I soon found out after saying to the sales guy, “Sign me up!”, that I in fact was the first person at that store to sign up for the service.

I have had Tmobile cell service for about 1.5 years now and have liked the service. The website is great and they seem to be on the up-and-up, so I took a calculated risk.

So, here’s the scoop:

Costs:

~$35 activation fee for the new phone number/line

My sales rep failed to mention this fee, which pisses me off but, quite frankly, I would have agreed to it anyway.

~$50 for a LinkSys router. I’ll post more details on the router later, but that is the one thing about the @Home service that there is a good bit of info on the net on.  I was using a D-Link Wireless router that had ‘Draft N’ status, so downgrading from the 802.11N to 802.11G was something I was disappointed with. Supposedly you can just connect both routers (and I have a 4-port switch laying around doing nothing to facilitate this) or chain them to the broadband source, but quite frankly I didn’t want to mess around with that. At least not during this ‘trial’ period. And besides, my wife is the only one who uses the wireless currently at my house and she’s using Ubuntu on her laptop with a wireless G card, so the N was going to waste anyway. The range of the D-Link wasn’t all that great either, so I figured I’d go with the LinkSys. Speeds seem no different to her after the switch. I can tell you that the ’strength’ level of the wireless signal coming from the D-Link was ~34% usually, whereas the signal level from the Tmobile Linksys was just over 50% yesterday. So that was better at least.

The router certainly is much more aesthetically pleasing too : ) It has lots of lights and is cool-looking, for what that’s worth (nothing). I’ve been running it since yesterday and no drops, no problems. It has 4 ethernet ports and 2 landline ports for you to hookup your phones. Any phone can be hooked up to it (well, I suppose rotary phones can’t). I hooked up an old wireless phone base/handset that I had in my basement to it (more about why below) and it worked flawlessly. Sound quality was great and it works just like a regular phone – when you pick it up you even hear a dial-tone like a regular landline phone. I walked upstairs to my bedroom, which is at the farthest point in my house from the router, which is in my new ‘family room’ (that’s code for our recently finished basement!), and the sound quality and volume level did not change. I was worried about that and was pleasantly surprised.

Some folks on the Broadband Reports website forum, which to date is the only decent source of info I could find about this service prior to buying it, have asked me to check if the outgoing caller ID lists my name when I call another landline from the @Home phone. I’ll try that tonight and report back with a new post here.

My current landline is with Verizon, and I use Verizon DSL. I have loved the DSL (I had Comcast broadband for a couple of years, which sucked – major lag/variance in bandwidth) and have had a solid connection with no downtime for about 5 years now. 1.5mb down steady. Maybe more now, haven’t checked in a while. I am going to run some tests using the @Home service and downloading a torrent or other large file at the same time to see how things are affected. If anyone has any tips/suggestions on how to best run some valid ‘tests’ I’d love to hear them.

Well, so far I’m happy. But I’ll tell you this: I haven’t initiated the porting of my current landline number yet. I’m gonna wait one more day then start the process, which supposedly takes at least 6 days, if not 10.

My main hurdle at this point is my telephones.  I have 3 ‘levels’ to my house – the basement, main floor, and upstairs. Since the basement was recently finished, I didn’t get a new phone for down there so I’ve been ‘phoneless’ down there from a landline perspective. In our living room is a great Motorla wireless base/handset that my wife won in some contest, and upstairs is a piece of garbage $9 phone. My problem is this: my @Home router is on my computer desk in my basement. I am not going to re-rig phone lines around so that I can plug the Motorola from my living room into the router, and since I want to get a new phone base with 2 handsets anyway so all 3 floors can be covered, I’m going to stop at the Tmobile store to investigate the VTech phones they are selling. IIRC, for about $100 I can get the base and 2 handsets. The key concer/question for me is this: if I set the base up on my PC desk in the basement,  no one will be able to see whether a new voicemail has arrived unless the handsets have some sort of flashing indicator on them. Hopefully they do. If not, I’ll have to find a set of phones that do work that way. And if that won’t work, I’ll re-think the setup of the @Home wiring. I can do it, I’m just too busy to do that these days. Also, allegedly, TMobile claims that the VTECH phones they are recommending/selling also include some special features/buttons specific to the @Home service. So, we’ll see. I’ll report back.

UPDATE 07.17.08: I’m noticing that many folks are coming directly to this post via the TMobile@Home website (which has linked directly to this post).

Please note that I have added some more posts regarding the @home service. Click here to view them.