T-Mobile wins a BUNGL for Talk Forever Mobile Service

The envelope has finally arrived from the Academy, and T-Mobile has one its first BUNGL award!  This on is for the expansively named  "Hotspot @Home Talk Forever Mobile" service.  The service is a fine way to get you to overpay for your VoIP service simply because T-Mobile forces you to use their handset.

Here's how it works:

• If you don't already have a wifi router on your broadband internet access service, you can pay $50 for a wifi router from T-Mobile. 
• Pay $39.99 per month (or more) on a postpaid T-Mobile wireless phone account
• Get a dual-mode GSM/wifi handset.  The Samsung models are subsidized and free, but the subsidy on the Blackberry Curve still leaves you paying $249 out of pocket.
• Pay $10 per month for the privilege of using your T-Mobile handset you bought, with the internet connection you are also buying, to place VoIP calls through the Internet to the T-Mobile network.
• When you are at home, in range of your wifi router, your mobile phone makes calls through your wifi hub and your broadband Internet access service and the minutes don't get charged against your plan's minutes limit.

So, your one-time costs could range from $0 to $300, and your monthly recurring costs will be at least $50 a month. 

To get inbound and outbound VoIP minutes a la carte through Skype, you would pay about $6 per month, versus the $10 per month incremental charge from T-Mobile for the Talk Forever service.

So, T-Mobile charges a 67% premium over Skype, and T-Mobile gets to off-load your traffic from their precious wireless spectrum, onto the "free" Internet, and charge you for the privilege.  Plus, with T-Mobile you have to buy either the Samsung or the Blackberry phone...you don't get to choose a different wireless phone if you want to.  And any data usage or text messaging on the dual-mode phone that happens to use the Internet instead of the T-Mobile network?  It counts against your plan's limits on data usage and text messaging.

Sounds like a good deal for T-Mobile, but not for you!

Comments

[Mark Birnbaum]

Ike, in the real world...
1) some people actually leave their homes and place calls
2) some people are willing to pay a little extra not to have to worry about SIP profiles, or FXO and FXS.
3) some people like the idea of a people having one phone number (yes, i had one of the first Grand Central numbers and 15 years ago had a routing/findme service (Wildfire) that still hasn't been matched)

T-mobile is trying to make money by delivering what they believe the customer wants. They are trying/delivering a number of variations (UMA, VoIP, Femtocell) above and beyond plain cell service. They will succeed if some customers (like myself) are willing to pay an extra $10/month for one of these supported services (note: support is much of what I'm paying for). I am paying for these services, even though it means a limited choice of cell phones and/or router to get that service.

Now, for the BUNGL award of the day. What tech savvy person would pay money for VoIP calling? There are services with free inbound service and services with free outbound service. With the correct $50 ATA, you can handle dual profiles and receive free inbound and outbound calling. Ike receives the BUNGL award for paying for Skype.

PS I stumbled on your blog and am basing my impression of your blog only on this entry. Sorry, first impressions count. Now, I am off to suggest that Google Labs work on search agent that allows a user the ability to exclude keywords from any search results. Your name would be on top of my exclude list.

[Darren Loher]

I have T-Mobile service and use the free version of of the HotSpot@Home service.

This is tricky to figure out from TMobile's service plans, but they do in fact offer free roaming to WiFi when using a HotSpot@Home capable phone. When using this service plan, minutes used count against your total usage. Why does this matter? The benefit is I get a better signal at home.

If I used my cell phone as my only phone, I'd do the $10/month unlimited. Until Vonage or Skype has mobile service, that's cheaper than $30 for a Vonage fixed line in my home.

I am an avid Skype user (skype me at dplore). I run skype on my TMobile Wing PDA. It works, but is only okay. The wing isn't quite fast enough to use it very well and EDGE doesn't quite have enough capacity it seems to maintain good quality for skype voice.

The 3 Skypephone seems interesting, but it seems unlikely to come to North America. http://skype.com/allfeatures/3skypephone/

[Marty Byle]

Your T-Mobile piece clearly shows that you do not understand the technology or the T-Mobile plan. Your credibility as a technology and telecom expert are shot to hell -

[Ike Elliott]

Responding to Michael Morisy's comment on a willingness to pay a 67% premium for a consistently usable service: yes, T-Mobile might deserve a premium if they did indeed have a magic wand to wave that made their service more consistently usable than Vonage's service or Skype's service. However, the place where service quality breaks down for all VoIP calls is in the link that T-Mobile, Skype, and Vonage all share...the last mile connection to your home. And make no mistake T-Mobile's service is a VoIP service, even though they are taking pains not to call it one. T-Mobile has no special ability to protect their packets from loss, jitter, and delay on that vulnerable last mile link...and neither do Skype or Vonage. So, I don't think you are really getting more for your money for your 67% premium.

[Ike Elliott]

Responding to the comment from Michael Graves, it is understandable that there is some confusion in product naming from T-Mobile, because T-Mobile changed the name. Last summer, they launched the service you are calling Hotspot @ Home in your comment, which won the BUNGL. T-Mobile now calls that service Hotspot @ Home Talk Forever Mobile, as named in the post. (Check it out at http://talkforever.t-mobile.com/).

The service T-Mobile launched last month is called Hotspot @ Home Talk Forever Home Phone (a nice, meaty name with some substance!), and this is the service that Michael calls Talk Forever @ Home, that doesn't require a dual mode handset, and works with a regular cordless home phone. This service did NOT win the BUNGL.

Both services do send calls over the wild Internet, though, and neither should be measurably more reliable than Vonage, for reasons described in my post from last month: http://ikeelliott.typepad.com/telecosm/2008/03/is-t-mobiles-ne.html

All the best,
Ike

[Michael Morisy]

So T-Mobile's charging a 67% premium for their service, but is it consistently usable? I could definitely see that being worth it, though the other costs might be a show stopper. Skype's doing a lot of things great: I think it's the easiest, most complete consumer UC option out there right now, and I think it has a lot of potential for a variety of business applications.

But, in my experience, it really can't replace landlines, which is what T-Mobile seems to be trying to do. VoIP != VoIP, and consumers really do care about base measures of quality which, in many cases, Skype doesn't meet (unless they've seriously upgraded their tech in the past couple of months since I played with it).

[Michael Graves]

Ike,

I've been reading you blog for a while and generally agree with your analysis, but you've missed the mark with this one. Look deeper into the service offering. Talk Forever @ Home and Hotspot @ Home are two different offerings.

Hotspot @ Home is pretty much what you describe, and not really and advantage for anyone. The fact that it required a dedicated dual mode phone means that it really won't replace that many land lines for all but the most adventurous.

Talk Forever @ Home is another matter. It's based on a Linksys router that provides FXS ports for normal phones. It takes 2 SIM cards meaning it can handle up to two numbers. It's really a UMA client for the T-Mobile network. Less hardware involved. Dovetails better into existing homes.

As has been blogged elsewhere the Talk Forever process only sends a small portion of the call over the wild internet. Just that hop from your home to the nearest T-Mobile POP. After that it's all on their network, just like a normal cell call.

For an extra $10/mo and not requiring an expensive dual mode phone, Talk Forever @ Home is a reasonably good deal.