Tuesday, January 27, 2009

T-mobile Hotspot at Home - NOT

This is a rant. Everyone should launch a rant when they are a victim of overhyped advertising for a product that doesn't measure up.

T-mobile had the greatest mobile phone idea in years. It's a cell phone that picks up WiFi signals and switches from cell towers to internet (without charging your minutes down) whenever you're in WiFi range. The only problem is it only works erratically.

My wife and I leaped at the idea and signed up for two phones. That was six months ago. We have two homes (We're snowbirds) and we travel a lot. Both our homes are in locations of zero to one bar signal strength so conventional cell service is hit or miss. Unfortunately T-mobile "hotspot at home" is NOT at home half the time. With either phone, no matter how close we are to a wireless router or what router it is, it fails to connect or drops the connection half the time. Often the calls are dropped in mid call. Johnny's Rants give T-mobile hotspot at home a big two thumbs down!

2 comments:

James Douglass said...

Dang! So, are you going to cancel the hotspot service or switch your provider? Do you need your spare Verizon phone back now that I found the one I thought I lost?

Johnny Douglass said...

For now I'm keeping T-mobile (Not Often) at Home because there's virtually no cell signal at either house. If Verizon comes up with something comparable I'll probably try them, but it will require a special WiFi enabled Verizon phone if they do.