T-Mobile to discontinue @Home service

By on Jan 7, 2010 at 8:30 AM
Rumor January 7, 2010

t-mobile-@home

About a month ago, one of our tipsters hit us up to let us know that T-Mobile was probably in the process of shutting down their @Home service. The @Home service allowed T-Mobile customers to make home phone calls via a T-Mobile router connected to the internet. The @Home service was an available add-on to most wireless service plans offered by T-Mobile for a modest $10/month. Bad news for future @Home customers, though, because another circulating rumor confirms what we reported a month ago — T-Mobile has supposedly halted future investment in the @Home service. Current customers can continue to use the service and T-Mobile will continue to support it for the time being. Once the current inventory of @Home routers has been sold, T-Mobile will no longer offer this service to new customers, though. Any T-Mobile customers interested in jumping on board, should do so tout de suite.

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  • Reader

    “It costed $10 monthly”

    Really? I expected better writing from BGR.

    • YES!

      HAHAHA!!! That was the first thing I noticed too!!

      • Reader

        Notice how it’s been edited?

      • http://www.bgr.com Andrew Munchbach

        It was grammatically incorrect :) thank you for pointing it out.

  • Roger A

    Im a little disappointed to see this go, although, T-Mobile would have done better if they offered it for people who have “FlexPay” – Clearly they favor raeping their main consumer base by offering those with more then perfect credit (T-Mobile is the hardest credit to pass without being offered only FlexPay)…

    I understand why they are getting rid of this though… 1. Not enough people are signed up for it to make a large enough impact 2. The price is TOO cheap for even T-Mobile to continue to offer it $19.99 a better price point 3. Its ONLY on PostPaid Perfect Credit accounts 4. UMA calling has pretty much made this obsolete (except once again this is only offered on PostPaid Perfect Credit accounts)

  • Brian

    As a user of this service which relies on it for working out of the home, I’ve got mixed emotions.
    For the price it is a pretty good service though gotchas exists an example of which is that you cannot use it to fax.
    Knowing now that they’ll no longer stay behind this service will cause me to look at other alternatives sooner rather than later.
    Having to ride out the remainder of the contract at $10/month might have kept me with it but they’ve provided a possible out I’ll be looking into today.
    They’re pushing conversion to their newer plans and bringing this service with it will cost you a bit more now than $10/month however you’re not necessarily required to bring it over.
    I’ll check later this morning and post back on what I find for any who are interested.

    • Jeff

      Brian, I will be interested to know what you find out. I have the service and it is fine for $10/month, but service is fairly bad. I guess I’ll go to U-Verse voice now….

  • webby

    We have T-Mo@Home, but won’t be renewing it at end of contract, for several reasons.

    1) It’s too expensive. We’ll switch to Magic Jack for 19.95 per year,

    and 2) when we dropped one phone from our family plan we paid the ETF, and went over with the CSR what plan the remaining phone and the VOIP line would be on.

    But then we got the next bill and the idiots turned the T-Mobile@Home line into a cell line on the billing and charged us $40 a month. Had to get on the phone to straighten it out (with difficulty), and then they still were trying to bump us from $10 to $15 per month for the stoopid VOIP line. I raised Hell, and they finally “grandfathered” us to the $10 rate. Very irritating! We’re gone from the T-Mobile@Home service at end of contract. Buh-bye. Hello Magic Jack. I have friends who have it and love it.

    • betchplz

      “Magicjack”

      I had laugh at that one, @Home has limited functionality, but the Magicjack is a sad joke. Hope you like missed calls and a “Fair use” policy that severely limits your “unlimited” calling.

    • harveyjc

      $10 bucks a month is too much for home phone? Wow, you are even cheaper than me. Magic Jack would be fine if you did not have to leave your PC on 100% of the time. You are probably blowing away any of your savings in extra electricity costs.

      • webby

        I almost never turn my computer off anyway, so not a problem. The times I do turn it off, we’re asleep, and I don’t want the phone ringing anyway.

        And we don’t put many minutes per month on the VOIP line. It’s just kind of a back-up for our cell phones, and a number to give out when we have to give a phone number, so we don’t have to give our cell numbers.

    • mrjlw2480

      I had this exact same problem with T-Mo last month. I had 3 lines on T-Mo…2 cell & 1 @home. I ported one of my cell numbers to Verizon and changed the other to a single line plan….the stupid T-mo people changed the @home line to a cell line and charged me 59.99 for its own separate line. It took me two weeks to get it fixed and they finally called me back and said that the billing was so messed up that they needed to cancel the @home line and issue me a new home number. I finally asked if they could just cancel @home all together & let me out without paying the ETF of $200.00. Since it was their fault in the first place for the screw up they agreed and let me out of the contract with no ETF fee. They told me they had no idea what was wrong with @home billing and so they just gave up on it.

      • webby

        That’s the exact thing that happened to us — ported one of two cell numbers to Verizon, and the billing trouble with the VOIP line began. They corrected the total amount on the current bill this month, but it remains to be seen if the next billing will be corrected, or if we will be overcharged again.. If they screw the pooch again, I will ask T-Mobile what you axed for — just let me out of the friggin contract, since you nimrods have no freaking idea what you are doing.

  • Vince

    There were hints at the time of the new price plans in Oct from our ADR that this was coming soon. It seems that TMO is falling in line to become much like the other majors. Still value positioned for now, they still hit the same price points, but are moving to network performance as a key differentiator. (How will the landscape look in 2012?)

    Finally, it seems VZW and TMO are the disruptors these days in handset offerrings stateside. AT&T’s just reacting (barely) and Sprint…where are you? Not a peep.

    • Vince

      PS Just saying that dropping @Home is another step towards being like the other carriers

  • http://www.webuyanyphone.com acf

    step in wrong direction?

  • Scott

    I have the service but it’s quirky and goes out a lot. Given this information I’ll probably move to drop it and move to a digital phone service with Time Warner who I dislike as well.

  • Nikolaus

    I have been only happy with my services for this. I will be very sad when one day my T-Mo router dies and I can’t get another one :(

  • Brian

    Update:
    They’re scratching their head about this so I’m going up the food chain.
    The first answer is “You have to pay the ETF” which is ridiculous given the clock is running out on a $10/mo plan and I’ll not recommit to $15/mo for a new contract period.
    If anybody else is checking on this, would you please post up?
    Brian

  • Carrie

    As a loyal @Home customer, this is very disappointing. Candidly, keeping my $10/month unlimited home phone was one of the reasons I have stayed with T-Mo. If they drop this altogether, I will very likely move to another carrier that offers unlimited calling at a lower rate.

  • hoop

    Ok so here’s the deal; they’re just not going to be supporting new activations. Tech support will still be there just no new activations THAT’S ALL! No ETF waivers they’re just discontinuing any new people from getting the service at the end of the month.

    If your worried your router is going to die you can go to the T-Mo store and buy one for 9.99 with no contract or even order one off the website; it’s that easy.

  • Iris

    I had looked into this. I think the reporting is unclear. There are 2 aspects to the @Home service. One is the potential for unlimited wifi calling. The other is the option to plug in up to 2 wired phones, replacing land lines with the internet service. I never got it, but the replacement of existing in-home service was the draw. I assume the wifi calling from existing phones will continue? I have a friend who has lousy cell coverage at her home who uses her phone (only certain ones work) through her computer router (not the T-mob router) and is very happy with it.

  • JakeyBoy

    decent idea, wrong provider. also, there are so many other ways to call international that blow @home prices out of the water.

  • http://imcellular.org Robert

    Wow! I guess that T-Mobile has decided to focus less on the interim step (wireline replacement) and focus more on the destination (mobile-only).

    For those considering the options to eliminate their landline bill and “Cut the Cord” please see my review of the available options: http://imcellular.org/2010/01/10/cutting-the-cord-2/

    Robert
    imcellular.org

  • Ryan

    I’m not surprised. Like other people said, you can get VOIP for cheaper. I had @home for a while and it dropped my calls like crazy. In addition, if i was coming home and talking on my cell phone i would get a dropped call when my phone switched from GSM/EDGE to WIFI. @home was pretty much awful all around and it only took me a few days to realize it.

  • Smell

    Great! It just gives me one more reason to drop T-Mobile now and switch to MetroPCS. T-Mobile didn’t want to offer me unlimited minutes witout raising my bill on my regular cell phone, so without @Home now, I’m gone!

  • http://www.modularhomesnetwork.com Manufactured Houses

    Awesome, Thanks! I was looking for this sort of thing.

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