I'm a T-Mobile subscriber, currently residing in Seattle with a home wifi connection. So you can imagine I was intrigued when I heard that T-Mobile is testing combination wifi/cell phones only in the Seattle area.

I can't wait for this concept. It's going to be great, and it's the next step towards making phone calls free for everybody.

Unfortunately, T-Mobile's test is not what I'm looking for, because as I understand from that site full of crappy video:

1. It costs extra per month
The whole point is that I want to pay a little extra for the 802.11 hardware and leverage that investment to get more service for free. For $20/month extra, I can upgrade my cell by enough minutes to render this pointless.
2. It only works with T-Mobile WiFi routers
Sure, they'd give me one to have at home, and Starbucks is everywhere, but that's not the point. The value is in taking advantage of friends' connections and open routers.

I think T-Mobile's just too scared... if they did this right, they could take over a huge market overnight. Many many people would be willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for a phone that could do this, and pay $40/month to have a cell plan for when there's no wifi.

Because T-Mobile isn't a landline company, they would only be hurting the market share of their competitors' other businesses. Plus, as free wifi gets more freely available, T-Mobile's costs actually go down.

So build the phone, price it so you make a profit on each sale (no matter how much it costs). You'll get a bunch of converts willing to pay anything up front and a monthly fee they won't even be using much of. Your biggest rivals don't dare follow, and overnight T-Mobile becomes a very compelling VOIP player. Give subscribers a client they can use on their computers, and Skype will get scared fast.

Chances are Surj's TuxPhone will do this before T-Mobile.

I'm glad they have the technology built though, and hopefully I'll run into somebody doing the test around here and get a chance to evaluate it.

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