[geeks] Opinions on T-Mobile and Verizon

[Nadine Miller]

der Mouse wrote:
>> You can also get a phone from them that works over WiFi, but I think
>> it might require their special AP/Router for that to work, ie, I
>> don't know that it works with just any WiFi connection, but I've not
>> done any real reasearch into them.
> 
> If it won't work with "just any WiFi", it's because they've botched the
> implementation - whether through malice or incompetence I'm not in a
> position to say, of course.
> 
> That assumes various aspects of the WiFi are non-broken, too, of
> course.  And if there's a NAT or firewalling in front of the WiFi
> (common in public WiFi spots), it can fail in ways that look like
> incompatibility with the WiFi when it's actually incompatability with
> the NAT/firewall, because the two are inseparable from the phone's
> point of view.

It's not intended for use with public WiFi spots.  It's intended to 
bridge your cell phone to VOIP over your existing ISP connection at home 
so you can use one phone number while not using your cell phone minutes.

The WiFi access point looks to be a bog-standard Linksys WRT-54G. 
They've probably just packaged up something from Vonage or another VOIP 
provider and slapped T-Mo number/auth restrictions on it.  I supposed 
there may be proprietary firmware on the router, but somehow I doubt that.

=Nadine=