Hypothetical Question about UMA

**st0p.** · 10-23-2009, 12:02 AM

As I've stated in another thread, I am on T-Mobile's flex pay. I go to school in the states but live in Canada. If I was to bring my T-Mobile 9700 back to Montreal (my home town), and continue paying my bill (as opposed to canceling it, as I usually do when I go home) would I be able to use the UMA feature on my home wireless? Or on any wireless internet I could connect to?

This might be the solution to my troubles of living in two locations for half the year each.

**kenny2skinny07** · 10-23-2009, 12:10 AM

As long as you have your location in canada as your primary billing address, you can use uma and make free calls. As far as the wifi goes, it just provides internet and a clear reception in a non gsm area

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**st0p.** · 10-23-2009, 12:44 AM

I don't though. My billing address is in CT. Why does that make a difference?

**Dabbill** · 10-23-2009, 12:46 AM

UMA calling does not have any limits. All that is required is that you have active blackberry internet plan, and a wifi connections that allows traffic to blackberry servers. If you had wifi access at the north pole you could make calls with your blackberry.

**mikeo007** · 10-23-2009, 01:29 AM

Just to state the obvious, you would have to have the Hotspot feature on your account as well. And you would not be able to roam away from the wireless like you could on the T-Mobile network.

**st0p.** · 10-23-2009, 01:43 AM

I thought you just needed a phone w. UMA and that, unless you paid the 10$ monthly for unlimited UMA calling, you'd have to use your minutes?

**mikeo007** · 10-23-2009, 11:28 AM

Originally Posted by st0p.

I thought you just needed a phone w. UMA and that, unless you paid the 10$ monthly for unlimited UMA calling, you'd have to use your minutes?

You're right, I thought you were refering to the unlimited UMA calling feature. But the fact that you can't leave the wifi area is still true, so you should turn off your roaming features.

**Brightwater** · 10-23-2009, 11:39 AM

Originally Posted by mikeo007

Just to state the obvious, you would have to have the Hotspot feature on your account as well. And you would not be able to roam away from the wireless like you could on the T-Mobile network.

This is incorrect. You don NOT need Hotspot@home to make UMA calls outside the US. The call over UMA will deduct minutes from your plan as a normal call would. H@H just gives you unlimited minutes while using UMA.

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**st0p.** · 10-23-2009, 11:50 AM

So based on that it seems that I would be able to use my phone in Canada over my wireless?

I think I need to further explain how Flex Pay works for my question to make sense. Flex Pay = you pay a set fee at the beginning of the month. I pay about 70$ for calling + txt + data, but I pay it before the month I will be using that data in. What that means is that I cannot incur extra expenses (ie going over my monthly minutes, or roaming in a foreign country, or making long distance calls). In the past, when I brought my phone to Canada, it would find a network, but because it was flexpay, I couldn't make a phone call or send a text.

I'm wondering if my phone will be able to do those things now over UMA, which would justify keeping it active over the summer.

**kmeyers02** · 10-23-2009, 01:33 PM

So here's my US-Can UMA experience. I was in Northern WA St and had no Tmo service but could get Rogers service. Put on WiFi, turned off cell service and had full UMA and was able to browse the web and what not w/o long distance charges.

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**mikeo007** · 10-23-2009, 01:37 PM

Originally Posted by Brightwater

This is incorrect. You don NOT need Hotspot@home to make UMA calls outside the US. The call over UMA will deduct minutes from your plan as a normal call would. H@H just gives you unlimited minutes while using UMA.

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Thanks for reading my second post

**sk8er_tor** · 10-23-2009, 04:45 PM

As a side note, I asked Rogers this same question before. I asked if their UMA will work outside of Canada. They said that once outside Canada, UMA will not work at all. It is only intended to work inside Canada and they track the IP address to determine if you are making the call from within Canada or not. Data WiFi does work at no charge.

I guess TMO does it differently. This would save a lot of money when travelling! Too bad many hotels do not allow smartphones to connect to their WiFi.