T-Mobile discontinuing @Home landline service?
One of our connects hit us with the following: “Heard that our new COO dislikes the @Home service because we make nothing on it. T-Mobile’s considering discontinuing it soon.” Now, to be clear, that’s not UMA we’re talking about but the actual home service that uses two T-Mobile SIM cards to provide you with a “landline” over a specialized router.
who wrote this? i expect better from bgr, seriously. the service with the wifi router uses 1 sim card and has 2 sim slots. meaning you could / can actually have 2 lines of service if you wanted.
so much for investigation………..
I would hate if they dropped it. I realize with all the unlimited mobile phone plans out there it doesn’t make much sense, until you figure in my wife, who kills phone batteries with a mere glance. Who here actually needs 2 cordless phones in the home for one person? I do because my wife kills both batteries almost everyday. Anyways, if they grandfather it, I’d be happy with that, I’ll never let it go.
No need for a landline anymore with unlimited plans for tmob. Why pay more for what you already have¿ smart decision to lower overhead on tmobs part.
Cmon tmo…don’t do this…the $10 a month unlimited service works for me very well…specially for my 10 hr conference calls…
Oh, Noes!! Our landline bill was $60/mo, now it’s just a $10 add-on to our 600 minute family plan. I bought one of these 6 handset wireless phones, I’ve got them all over the house. Reception, voice quality, etc is head and shoulders over anything you get from a cell phone. Plus both my wife and myself can get on the line at the same time.
Have to agree, tho, it’s biggest benefit to TMo is to lock people into contracts. I had been out of contract for three years, but I was willing to sign up for two years to save $50/mo. BUT if I was going to have to extend my contract for two years, I might as well extend the two cell phone lines and get some new phones at discounted rates, so now all three lines are on two year contracts.
I have had the @home since it first came out and I love it. I hated paying over $50.00 for a land line. I lived without one for a long time, but I need one now because the kids are getting older and its more convenient when you need to troubleshoot and only have the cell phone. They better not get rid of it. It will probably get grandfathered like the roadside service which they finally told me no more and I had no choice in that matter.
Christ I hope this is true. T-Mobile has been up our asses for a year and a half about this product that has a VERY high rate of return because it randomly stops working and requires at least SOME knowledge of networking to maintain. It’s even gotten to the point where they basically want us to be salespeople for the local ISP’s (for those who don’t have high speed), just to sell the wretched @Home. It’s a horrible product, and I couldn’t be happier if this is true.
I Work For T-Mobile at a Corporate store. and I can tell you there is absoyltly no way in hell that we are going to stop that service. THose things are some of our hardest pushed items. and they do indeed actually make the company a rather large ammount of money so i have no idea as to how told you that.
some things should be nurtured and some thins shouldn’t.
this is one that should be nurtured.
i have them both.
hotspot@home and plain old @home.
love them both.
i hope this is all bubkes
I’ve had this service since it was introduce at t-mobile.I hope they grandfather this service.I always use @home to get ahold of wife&kids.They turn off the cells and I can always call them on this line.I alsolike having a home phoneline.The price can not be beaten.I’ve had T-mobile for over six years now and never had a problem with thier service.I hope they keep this service,if not I might just drop them all together.
Wow, u guys still pay for phone service??? WTF? I have had ooma for 2 years. It’s free voip yes free, never get a bill, ever, nationwide unlimited calling. I bought the unit on amazon for $200 and it has paid for itself. Free phone forever !!!!! Go to ooma.com for details
Damn I love me cheap ($10) Tmobile home service. I hope they change their minds or at least let me keep the wireless router.
I think this is short-sighted (or lost) perspective. This isn’t really supposed to “make” money for TMO. It is supposed to draw customers. But they don’t promote or market it – at least not much that I see, besides their own website.
Believe it or not, there are a ton of folks out there who still don’t quite want to give up their landline for a variety of reasons (our house is one). If they could show customers the overall savings they would net by getting a landline thru TMO and also get their cell service, then the @home landline program did its job – and effectively helped TMO gain both marketshare and additional revenue.
The point isn’t to MAKE money with this program, but to NOT LOSE money and to increase their market share. It seems borderline brilliant, but they’re apparently doing a good job of not capitalizing on it.
Killing it now will make happy customers unhappy, then non-customers who hear about the complaining will be even less interested in becoming TMO customers.
Will be a grandfathered service. If you have it will not lose it (like myfavs at this point). At a minimum we are getting new hiport adaptors as the current ones are end of life. The service works well but there is not a big demand for it. And seriously, go by the router for ten bucks. Even if you are not a tmo customer. Its the same linksys wrt54g just with the home phone jacks.
I work for t-mobile and if they got rid of @home that would my dream. this product sucks, all we hear is complaining of how crappy it works. we have no techs that will go out and fix it so you are always on your own, we get paid nothing for it and it sucks. Please t-mobile, as a customer and employee dump this shit
as a frontline employee for t-mo, i know how difficult this service can be to sell, let alone, keep from being returned. truth be told, we make very little money when we sell it and the aggravation of trying to help customers getting it setup isn’t worth the small monetary reward–actually, it’s become more of a pride thing, if anything, for that small group of us who have been successful in selling @home. i’ve noticed, based on my personal experience, this service either works really well or doesn’t work at all and it’s mostly because we’re expecting our customers–who call sim cards “slim cards” and wifi “wee-fee”–to set it up themselves. i ditched at&t’s landline service and replaced it with @home (mostly because t-mo employees get the service for free) and it works really well. granted, i know a thing or two about technology and having a stable internet connection (that’s never disconnected, lol) helps, too. now, in true t-mo fashion, i can almost guarantee that @home will just become another grandfathered service and those who already have it can keep it. i think it’s pretty obvious that the big people upstairs are probably planning to phase it out. if you look at the current floorset guidelines, the @home display is hidden behind the sidekick display, which, in most stores, faces the back of the store. now, that could be because they just needed a place to put it, but i also heard that the higher-ups aren’t even talking about @home during their weekly meetings anymore which makes everything seem more clear. i think with the new direction t-mo is going, now is probably a good time to say “hello to goodbye”. it was great while it lasted…at least for those of us who actually got it connected.
I have it I and love it!!! I hope they grandfather it in. It ia a great deal. $10,00 for unlimited calling and t-Mobile to t-Mobile calling from cell. T-Mobile PLEASE DON”T DROP THIS SERVICE!
I have never had any problems with the service. Call quality is fine using my Comcast internet.
This would really suck if they got rid of this. It is inexpensive and does what I need it to do.
This service fills in the gap for the lack of TMO cell coverage at home. TMO maps say I have coverage, but I do not.
How about having more phones that offer UMA capability this would then take the place of the TMO@home for me. I would have loved to have my G1 or MyTouch to have UMA.
This would suck for those who have the service (me!) Wonder if they will allow current users to be grandfathered in?
For those that are worried that they will lose their @Home service, don’t fret. In all likliness it will be grandfathered for existing customers. I agree with the T-Mobile employees that can’t wait for @Home to go away. There is so much pressure coming from the top-down to sell @Home, and it is not a money-maker for T-Mobile (not a money-maker for the employees that sell it either; only $5 commission). Many of the readers of this website are pretty tech-savvy, but for most of the customer base this is not the case. All the calls to tech support and the calls to retail stores for tech support (not to mention sales reps making house-calls to help the customers who are not tech-savvy set up the router; since when did Sales Reps become home-phone installers?) cost T-Mobile more than you think. Good riddance to @Home, so T-Mobile can focus on 3G.
I would of love to have the service. I have tried since it first came out. However, I have five lines allready so I can not add it. I can open another account pick a qualifying plan $35 or so plus the $10 @home fee. But that would make it not worth it. I don’t understand why T-mobile won’t let you add a 6th line as long as it is the @home service. I have talked to t-mo associates in the store on the phone and at the corporate level. More than a couple have tried real had to find a way around the five line limit. I can’t be the only one in the five line boat can I?
They have fixed that now! I work for the big magenta, and I can tell you that we have a way of splitting it onto its own account now. Go out and get it before it goes away, so you can grandfather it in!
How did you get around the 5 line limit? Right now I have 2 accounts, one with 4 cell phone lines and the other with one cell line and 2 @Home lines. I would like to cancel the fifth cell line and put both @Home lines on my first account, so I would have 6 lines total.
i have @home and it works great after the initial week of some connection problems due to the tmo tech sppt not getting the settings on their end correct.
since then it’s been fantastic.. and when the signal in my area is weak for cellular, i don’t worry cuz i have the voip backup.
just as an aside, i’d pay $15/mo to keep it if they were considering dropping it altogether. $10/mo has been cheap and easy, but even an extra $5/mo is cheaper than vonage or other voip companies offering pay by month services.
nowdays, you can’t simply rely on one technology – ie. unlimited mobile minutes. if it’s down, you’re sunk.
The strange thing about @home is that everytime I get a marketing call about some great price addon to from my cable company or some VOIP tele-marketer is trying to convince me to try them, I explain @home and the have never heard of it. This is a great proposition! UMA, @home and Hotspot puts t mobile above all the rest. Combine in MyFav’s and there is no other plan by any company. The sorry thing is that Europe is years ahead of us and that is because t mobile leads the way. What is the problem here in the US. The managment seems to be knee jerking, new TV sposts, engagments with celebs, cutting plan prices; That tells me the company masters are lost and out of touch. t mobile has a long list of “firsts” but seems to ignore them. Any opinions?!