T-Mobile @Home
Manufacturer: T-Mobile USA Part number: SERVTMOBILEHOME
- More product information:
- Editors' review
- User reviews
- Manufacturer info
- Bottom Line:
- T-Mobile @Home is an affordable and easy way to add VoIP service to a regular home telephone.
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Where to buy
| store | customer rating | inventory | tax & shipping | price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Not yet rated | In stock per month with T-Mobile contract and T-Mobile @Home HiP | Enter zip code to get total price: Price +Tax +Shipping =Total price | as of 12/08/2009 |
CNET editors' review
T-Mobile @Home price range: $10.00
- Reviewed by: Nicole Lee
- Reviewed on: 06/26/2008
- Released on: 06/25/2008
The good: T-Mobile @Home is easy to set up and use, plus it can be used with any touch-tone phone. You can also add up to two different phone lines per router.
The bad: You need to purchase a special router from T-Mobile for it to work, and there's a very slight hiss and delay in call quality.
The bottom line: T-Mobile @Home is an affordable and easy way to add VoIP service to a regular home telephone.
When T-Mobile introduced its HotSpot @Home service last year, we praised it for finally freeing us from the tyranny of the landline. The service lets you make and receive calls via Wi-Fi (as long as you have a compatible cell phone) in addition to the regular cell phone network. Therefore, you could just make calls for "free" (there's a monthly fee) as long as you're within range of a Wi-Fi signal.
But T-Mobile received complaints that people still were not ready to give up their landlines. The idea of one central home telephone is still a strong one, and using a cell phone when chatting at home is not something a lot of people wanted to adopt. With that, T-Mobile developed a VoIP solution aptly called T-Mobile @Home. All you need is a special router from T-Mobile, a broadband connection, and a regular touch-tone phone. Put it all together, and you're done. Of course, you can also use this router for the HotSpot @Home service mentioned earlier. The router is priced at $149.99, but you can get it for $49.99 with a two-year service agreement. The @Home service will cost you $10 a month on top of your existing wireless plan.
The router we tested was a Linksys router specially configured for T-Mobile. It has four Ethernet jacks and two RJ-11 phone jacks on the back, plus an array of green and blue LEDs on the front. Setting it up is the same as setting up any other wireless router, save for one difference: You need to install a SIM card. Open up a compartment in the back, and you'll find two SIM card slots--this means the router can support up to two separate phone lines. The SIM card slot marked Line 1 corresponds to the Phone 1 jack, and the Line 2 slot corresponds to the Phone 2 jack. So if you insert a SIM card in Line 1, you should connect your home phone to the Phone 1 jack.
After installing the SIM card, connect your broadband modem to the router and then connect the router to your computer like normal. From there you can attach your touch-tone phone to the router via one of the two phone jacks. When powered up, the green LEDs should then start flashing, while the blue LED indicates that a phone has been connected. You can now start using the phone straight away. If you wish to change any security settings, you can do so via the computer's Web browser. The entire process took probably less than five minutes.
Making calls feels just like making calls on any other phone. Call quality is comparable to landline, though we did experience a very slight delay at certain times, and a bit of hiss when we moved the cordless phone a little too far from the base. Otherwise, call quality is excellent. Also, the router's blue LED will flash if you have voice mail, which is a nice bonus indicator.
As part of the @Home plan, you get unlimited nationwide long-distance, caller ID, voice mail, call waiting, three-way conferencing, and more, all for only $10 a month. Another nice feature is that you can use ringback tones, or "CallerTunes," which you can't do on regular landline phones. We were provided a VTech cordless phone to test out the service, but it is completely optional--you can use the router with any touch-tone phone. If you do wish to get the VTech phone (which we actually quite liked), it's about $59.99.
Overall, we were very pleased with the experience. Call quality is excellent, setup is easy, and the low monthly fee certainly beats regular landline prices. We're still a little wary of advising people to give up landline service altogether in case of power outages or emergencies, but T-Mobile's @Home service definitely provides a very persuasive argument to ditch the old phone company.
User reviews
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Worked great - no hassles thus far
by tuckerlord on November 19, 2008
Pros: $10 - a deal. I recieved great line quality with an ATT 5.8ghz digital phone over 6Mb cable modem connection. Hooked it up, and it worked out of the box, no issues.
Cons: $50 router/2yr contract and T-Mobile's website is a pain to navigate and unstable, though it is getting better over time.
Summary: Don't get a VOIP service if you have terrible internet connectivity. You need to secure the router like any Linksys, which has never been all that user-friendly. Make sure ...
Summary: Don't get a VOIP service if you have terrible internet connectivity. You need to secure the router like any Linksys, which has never been all that user-friendly. Make sure you have a decent phone that does not run at 2.4ghz as that's what the wireless router runs on. If the call wait time for support is 4hrs long, it's probably a system wide issue. It doesn't like sitting behind another router, so you will have to hook it directly to your internet and put your existing router behind it.
2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
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THE WORST PRODUCT/SERVICE IMAGINABLE
by jaghorse on May 23, 2009
Pros: I GUESS THE FACT THAT IT IS $10.00, BUT IT COST ME DOWN TIME ON THE INTERNET, COST AND MORE HASSLES THAN - NOW THAT I THINK OF IT THERE ARE NO PROS
Cons: No phone service quite often, causes my internet to go down, the WORST customer service, combative, abusive and attempting to be intimidating.
Summary: The first few months were not bad, although I never had enough of signal for the Hotspot, unless I sat on the router. Up to January I only had a ...
Summary: The first few months were not bad, although I never had enough of signal for the Hotspot, unless I sat on the router. Up to January I only had a few outages. From January on it could be down minutes, hours or even days, Yes, I did the whole thing reset the router and whatever it took - sometimes it would work then for a short time. It would drop calls consistently and regularly. Reset the router and call back - same thing. I could here them for a few minutes - they couldn't hear me, then it would go dead - that whole blue light thing.
Complained and they told me they never had this problem before - liars. Sent me a new router and the same thing started happening. Now I am livid and I get their executive response team again, but not until I start at the lower levels. Emailed Robert Dotson, heard from the executive response team who were combative and extremely verbally abusive. Executive response person is laughing about the problem and speaking over me. Angela, executive response person tells me they are going to investigate my phone calls - now I laugh, after I got over the shock of what she said - is this like wire tapping? I told her go ahead! Told her not to call me again - I needed someone else. She continued to call me and said she would continue to call me, until I emailed Dotson about harassment. Senior tech calls and said he had the same problem, but he was going to come to my home with yet another router and see what he could do - he never showed. He sent me an email saying the router didn't come in.
When I wanted out of the contract in January I was told it would be $200.00 per line to get out of the contract - I had three. Then a week or so ago they send me a Fed Ex letter they are terminating my service. They did so without giving me time to port numbers or anything, leaving us without any phone service abruptly. No 911 service - nothing. Good thing we didn't have a fire or medical emergency. I have contacted the FCC, BBB, AG and am in the process of small claims suit. Spoke to a couple of attorneys who are already involved in class action suits with T-mobile. It qualifies, since the number of people with the same problems are numerous, if you research it. Unfortunately I did not, before I purchased the service. I just figured it would be like Packet 8 and/or Vonage which I had for years without any real problems. I learned my lesson.
T-mobile is a reprehensible company, with some interesting approaches to customer service. Now I have to spend my time to get back my activation fees, expenses for phones, equipment, etc. I have vowed I will not be the typical American consumer that has become nothing more than a door mat. Go ahead T-Mobile investigate my phone calls!1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
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6 months later, still not ready for prime time
by ralphmm on March 7, 2009
Pros: Its cheap - at $10/month its less than many other VOIP solutions. The feature list is adequate, although barely so.
Cons: Unreliable, and customer service ranges from mediocre to atrocious. About once every week or two the service goes down. Sometimes a reboot of the router fixes it, other times its 30+ minutes on the phone to reach and deal with customer service.
Summary: I've been struggling with this service for 6 months. The service itself is pretty unreliable, and their customer service is mostly frustration. They claim that many of the problems ...
Summary: I've been struggling with this service for 6 months. The service itself is pretty unreliable, and their customer service is mostly frustration. They claim that many of the problems should have been solved by a firmware update to the router, but that update caused a few weeks of making calls when the other party could not hear me. A few more hours dealing with t-mobile and linksys customer service, and its fixed (for now).
This week the issue was a few hours of some kind of network problem where all long distance calls were failing. The worst was when I contacted customer service, they were not trained on that specific problem, and they revert to blaming the problem on my desktop phone.
Lots of negatives compared with other VOIP solutions:
No web interface to manage features, and very limited advanced features. You can call customer service, and spend 10 minutes getting someone to adjust forwarding, but that's about it. No call blocking based on number. No sending voice mails as an email. No simultaneous ring. No computer dialing interface. Will not support sending faxes, even at low speed. No *67 or other caller ID blocking features. Can't see call history until the monthly bill gets generated. Prohibitively expensive international per minute charge, even to Canada.
Lastly, they want a two year commitment for this, and in hindsight I would not sign up for that again.
For the last month I've also been using magicjack, with no service problems, reasonable international charges, seems to send faxes, a few less features, overall a much better deal.1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
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I LOVE my T-Mobile @home!!!
by Dusty_71 on November 23, 2008
Pros: $10 month for unlimited calling! Tmo to Tmo calling! Excellent call quality. No need to buy new phones. Voicemail, call waiting, call ID, etc. Did I mention $10 a month? Easy to set up. As always, great customer serv. should you need it.
Cons: There is a set up fee, and the cost of the router. If you lose power or internet, you lose your phone. Not true 911 calling. No fax capability yet. Cannot use with home security system yet. Still have to pay Verizon for DSL. 2yr contract.
Summary: I am in LOVE with my Tmo @home! I tell everyone I know about it. The call quality has been great for me. My only problem was with my 5....
Summary: I am in LOVE with my Tmo @home! I tell everyone I know about it. The call quality has been great for me. My only problem was with my 5.2GHz phone system. Calls sounded like everyone was under water. But once I moved them away from the router, all was well. I can still use that system.
I love that I can call other Tmo users, and they don't lose minutes. It's a Tmobile to Tmobile call.
I was paying over $40 month to Verizon for my landline, and didn't even have long distance! Now I've got it all! What I wouldn't give to say goodbye to Verizon completely. Sadly they're the only game in town for high speed internet. BTW, you'll have to switch over to Dry Loop DSL w/Verizon...but don't let them charge you extra for it! And be prepared for headaches throughout that process. Not the brightest stars in the sky.
But enough about Verisuck. You wanna know if you should get this service, right? Some things to consider...
It is not true 911. You have to contact Tmo, and give them your living address so you will be sent to your local agency, or what have you.
If you lose power or your internet, you lose your home phone. However, you could always get a backup power supply, and you surely have a cell phone with Tmo. You can also keep a basic land line...there are several options that run between $7-16 generally.
No faxing capability yet. And it won't work with a home security system. They claim they're working on both those issues. But again, you can keep a basic land line for that. And there's always online faxing.
I only mention these things, because they are things everyone should consider before going VOIP. To me, they're not a big deal. But to others, they might be.
Something else I've noticed lately, is that my DISH receiver keeps dialing out. This is not a Tmo issue, but rather a DISH issue. And a lot of VOIP users seem to be having it. Still looking around for a solution. I don't get charged for the calls, but they are constant, and my bill is several pages long now. But, considering DISH didn't seem to support VOIP a year or so ago, it's a small price to pay.
Onto the good things. Sound quality on my end is just as good as my land line was. And I've asked several people if they could tell any difference. All of them said they couldn't. No tinny sound on either end. My parents live about a block away, and still have Verizon landline. They have constant static on their phones. So, my $10 a month VOIP actually has better quality than they're pricey landline.
The caller ID is true caller ID. I've heard that other VOIP systems have issues with this feature. Not so with Tmo.
If you're worried about not having enough phones, since you only have one jack...just buy a splitter, and use multi-phone systems. I found a five way phone splitter at Big Lots, and ran my own lines throughout the house. I have 4 lines plugged into the splitter, making a total of of 8 phones. Works perfectly.
One of my phone systems is the one they sell at Tmo. I got it off ebay. It's no better than any of my other phones, but the voicemail indicator is a nice little feature. I must say though, that (on those phones) I do notice an echo for the first few seconds of a connected call. But it's only a few seconds.
I know the 2yr contract sound scary if you're trying VOIP for the first time. But I decided that for $10 a month, I could always go back to a landline and just pay Tmo the monthly fees until my contract was up. It's $120yr...we spend that much for a few months of gas these days. And, you still have your 30days of trial. You can send it all back if you don't like it.
I highly recommend this offer from Tmo. If you're thinking about it...DO it. You'll be glad you did. You just can't beat the price. The call quality is great. And I'd sooo much rather deal with Tmo's customer service than Verizon's. Be prepared for the first bill, just like upgrading a cell phone or adding a new line. But the loss of landlline bills will make up for it rather quickly! THANK YOU T-MO!1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Getting this up and running has been a nightmare
by kwcromer on November 14, 2009
Pros: Good price, very good sound quality.
Cons: -Doesn't work with normal DSL with a phone line associated with it (even if phone co. is different than ISP).
-I was told I could use my same phones. No.
-Wasn't easy for me to set up, and I already had a wireless network and work in a tech job.Summary: Features and functionality are pretty good, but for me that was easily overshadowed by the BEYOND abysmal sales and support. I have spent about 20 hours so far and am ...
Summary: Features and functionality are pretty good, but for me that was easily overshadowed by the BEYOND abysmal sales and support. I have spent about 20 hours so far and am not done yet. (Some of that time was with ISP.)
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Great service, unbeatable price
by badaphooko01 on October 4, 2009
Pros: $10 a month added to my existing family plan, phone quality is outstanding, free long distance and since most of my call are to home and my wife's cell, the minutes are all free. I was also able to use my existing phones.
Cons: 2 year contract
Summary: I read many reviews and all of the horror stories but I decided to take the plunge anyways. It seems like most of the problems are because of the router ...
Summary: I read many reviews and all of the horror stories but I decided to take the plunge anyways. It seems like most of the problems are because of the router the give you. Luckily for me I use a 2wire modem router through at&t dsl service, so i only needed to use the hi port adapter and have had no issues. It was a great move on our part since our phone company was nickel and diming us on everything. For a family plan with 2 phones 700 shared minutes full data,300text messages and the tmobile at home service we are paying about 80 bucks with my work discount.That was a no brainer. Tmobile brings the best value to the table out of all the big cell companys.
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From Vonage (after three happy years) to T-mobile @home
by spartanmba on September 16, 2009
Pros: The service is good. The voice quality is better than Vonage. While I was very happy with Vonage, I am a T-Mobile subscriber and have been very with their cell service. Many of the same basic and mid level features of Vonage.
Cons: Well, if you are not a T-mobile cell user then you are out of luck. Does not support fax or Tivo data calls. Rings the phone in very short rapid burst. No website to control features.
Summary: Great service and would highly recommend for T-mobile customers. Thanks T-Mobile!
Summary: Great service and would highly recommend for T-mobile customers. Thanks T-Mobile!
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Long time VOIP user
by pbchef on September 1, 2009
Pros: Excellent Call quality (Better then Vonage) - I was a 7 yr Vonage customer. Extremely cheap $10/month. Phone adapter/router is free if you negotiate with a T-mobile store. Unlimited long distance.
Cons: Like other VOIP providers or actually the broadband connect (Cable) sometimes it fails. but it has been 98% reliable. Limited features. Locked into a 2yr Contract. Fax service will not work on this VOIP.
Summary: If you are looking for an inexpensive VOIP without all the bells and whistles that other companies include I would highly recommend this service.
Summary: If you are looking for an inexpensive VOIP without all the bells and whistles that other companies include I would highly recommend this service.
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Good service, easy setup
by bvtncurmud on August 17, 2009
Pros: Setup worked out-of-the box, once we ignored the "Insert this disk" instruction. We plugged a line from the rounter back into the wall to allow other phones to ring at same time, even some 2.4 ghz cordless phones which technic'ly shouldn't work.
Cons: Doesn't support fax use. Challenging for land line to port numbers: not T-Mobile's problem. Short segments (tenth of a second) "skips" from time to time.
Summary: Excellent price, easy install, good support with in store discounts.
From reading the "cons", I'd suggest finding a store with knowledgeable staff (yes, they ...
Updated on Aug 17, 2009Summary: Excellent price, easy install, good support with in store discounts.
From reading the "cons", I'd suggest finding a store with knowledgeable staff (yes, they do exist) and a manager who cares. They can help streamline the process.
Updated on Aug 17, 2009 -
Okay when and if it works
by sonji3 on August 1, 2009
Pros: Cheap; works with original landline wireless phones.
Cons: Router totally bites and affects the internet across the network. Takes 15 min- 30 min to after reset to come back online. Wireless is spotty. Have to wait 1 more year to get rid of it.
Summary: This worked really well for 2 months after I first got it. Then it started to work some days and not others. Since the home phone is critical it doesn'...
Summary: This worked really well for 2 months after I first got it. Then it started to work some days and not others. Since the home phone is critical it doesn't really bother me that much, but if it was I WOULD BE REALLY REALLY MAD. If you need this to be up all the time please pass this by. I will be making the router secondary so then it really won't bother me...can't wait to my plan is up.
Manufacturer info
- T-Mobile USA
- Manufacturer profile
- Browse T-Mobile USA products on Shopper.com
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- Website: http://www.t-mobile.com/
- Address:
12920 SE 38th St.
Bellevue, WA 98027 - Phone: 800-937-8997
