T-Mobile USA previously announced that a trial for its recently announced Hotspot at Home fixed mobile convergence service would take place in Seattle, now the service is set to launch next month nationwide, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Nokia and Samsung supplied phones for the trial of the service in Seattle, where customers paid $20 a month on top of their current mobile bill to test it out. Additional family members could be added for another $5 a month. The report indicates that the pricing may be tweaked before the commercial launch.
The carrier had some technical difficulties with handoff between the carrier's network and the WiFi hotspot, which is a longtime issue for fixed mobile convergence. Battery life issues plagued the handsets for the trial, but new versions reportedly have fixed these two issues.
For more on T-Mobile's FMC effort:
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)