T-Mobile rolling out mobile VoIP service…this week?

We must be missing something here. We try to stay abreast of everything wireless, because, you know, it helps us compose articles for this here blog. Over time, we’ve gotten a feel for many of the major players in the wireless game and how they operate. Some things, though, we just don’t get. Take last week for instance. We ran a bit about T-Mobile being unfriendly to a British mobile VoIP company, going so far as to block the service over the matter of a connection fee. Now, in the US, T-Mobile plans to roll out its down mobile VoIP service. Just to show that we’re just reporting speculation (and third-hand speculation at that), we’ll let a quote do the talking:

“The Boy Genius Report says it has seen documents that suggest the launch will occur on June 27,” smartphonetoday recently reported on its website. However, T-Mobile USA is being tightlipped on the matter.

That’s tomorrow. Wethinks it’s tough to keep something under wraps that’s supposed to launch in 24 hours — we also think it’s not exactly good business to do so, either. Once again, we must be missing something; we were always of the belief that hype did half the selling. Anyway, the service costs $20 on top of your normal T-Mobile service plan, and you have to nab a Nokia 6086 or a Samsung t409 for the service to work. But once you have those things in place, you can make free calls any place there’s WiFi. You can also access the Internet at a much faster pace. We’re not sure if they’re charging extra for ‘net access, but would be wholly disappointed if they did (not because we’re cheapskates, but because if you have WiFi, you’re already subscribed to the Internet). The true cost, however, won’t be $20 in most cases, and this really makes us wonder about T-Mobile. Their biggest selling point is “more anytime minutes.” It helps them stand out from other major carriers. Now, though, there doesn’t seem to be a need for more anytime minutes. In fact, you could probably get by with very few of them, if you’re not the type that yaks while driving. So if you can find peace with a $30 per month plan, you can get the whole package for $50. Not bad at all. And you don’t have to worry about that Wednesday afternoon call to mom putting a dent in your minutes. Yes, we think this is an excellent service. We’re just confused about T-Mobile right now. [TMCnet]]]>