T-Mobile Launches UMA Service in Seattle
At Voice Over WLAN News, Glenn Fleishman picks up on a New York Times report that T-Mobile has launched converged cell/Wi-Fi services in Seattle. "It's in my own backyard, but I haven't seen it yet!" Fleishman complains.
Fees for the service are $20 on top of your cell phone's basic voice plan. The service, somewhat clunkily called T-Mobile HotSpot @Home, requires one of two dual-mode handsets as well as a T-Mobile router, and permits Wi-Fi roaming onto the T-Mobile HotSpot network.
"The requirement of a specific router relates to the low-power mode of handsets that needs a particular protocol embedded in the router to work — WMM Power Save," Fleishman writes. "Few routers have this right now, but it's really a protocol-level feature, not a hardware change."
No word yet on when or if the service will expand beyond Seattle.
More here from ZDNet … here from ComputerWorld … and here from Unstrung.