UMA/WiFi Calling?

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skyline889

[H]ard|Gawd
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Oct 15, 2007
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I'm having a hard time understanding T-Mobile's policy on international WiFi calling. I was told that it can be used anywhere on the globe and you'll only be charged for your standard minutes by a T-Mobile salesperson but everywhere else I've read says either its only for nationwide calling and you have to buy a plan or you don't get charged any of your minutes at all. :confused: Do any of you guys have any experience with this? Was the sales guy telling the truth or just trying to sell a UMA phone?
 
I use UMA with my blackberry 8320. I've never tried to use the phone's UMA features outside of the US so I can't comment on that. Inside the US it works like this. If you have the unlimited hotspot calling plan add-on that costs 10 bucks a month, you can use UMA from anywhere you have a wifi connection without using your minutes. Without the 10 dollar a month add-on you can make calls via UMA, but it will use your minutes just as usual.

At first I wondered why you'd bother with wifi calling if it still used your minutes, but it's great if you are at a friend's house and have crappy cell coverage there, or just at home for the increased call quality.
 
sorry for the O/T but that's a pretty cool feature. :D anyone know of a winmo equivalent? wonder if there's anything for my touch pro
 
Magnetik- no, it has to be a T-Mobile modified OS. Last I checked, that meant the Blackberry 8100 and higher, Samsung Katalyst, and maybe one or two others. Closest thing you'll get aftermarket is Skype, since you'd have to tie it into the cell carrier's servers to pull the number/plan info otherwise. Good luck getting any of the carriers' blessings on that...
My family has two 83x0 Curves and a Katalyst, and all three of us make good use of the feature- enough that we bought the $10/month Unlimited feature on all applicable lines. Sounds great, although it does suffer a lot if my wireless is already saturated (streaming video off the fileserver).

I'm 99.9% sure that making a Wifi call from overseas will be charged the same as domestically, because T-Mobile doesn't trace the origin- at least not yet, and I don't think they will. My strong suggestion is to get the $10/month plan for the duration of your travels, and leave the actual phone antenna disabled to make sure you don't accidentally use "real" minutes with International-rate markup.
 
thanks for the nfo. guess a app like that would be like the carrier shooting itself in the foot. since I am around some sort of wifi 90% of my day.
 
Yeah I used UMA on my BB8320 (I think the 8320 is the only 83xx one that supports it) and it's pretty cool. I have heard there is an HTC winmo phone that supports it but haven't seen it... Would like to know more about that though.
 
I don't understand why Blackberry is the only one who has been including this feature in the majority of their new phones, why HTC, why no uma support??
 
I think one reason is only T-Mobile in the US supports UMA currently, and T-Mobile has no 3G still in a lot of regions (like SLC where I am) and so there are a lot less smartphones sold for T-Mobile, so it's not worth investing the $$$ to do it. Blackberry just got the one-up on this one I guess.
 
magnetik said:
thanks for the nfo. guess a app like that would be like the carrier shooting itself in the foot. since I am around some sort of wifi 90% of my day.
Click to expand...

I'd look into subscribing to Skype Pro, which costs ~$30/year. It allows unlimited calls to any phone (cell or landline) in the US or Canada, and they have a version for Windows Mobile which you can use over Wi-fi.

I currently subscribe to it for long-distance calls via PC, but I recently got a Windows Mobile phone and the call quality is okay as long as you have a strong enough Wi-fi signal.
 
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