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.

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.