Question about UMA in Denver area

[Mistik1973]

Moving to the States next year to Denver. Is it worth getting the UMA option? I checked and all the T-mobile hot spots are at stores or starbucks. Does anyone have any experience with this?



thanks in advance

[vdubguy2k]

I live in Loveland, about 40 minutes north of Denver but go to Denver quite often. I personally love the UMA feature and wouldn't want to be without it now. Seems most places I go now-a-days have wifi so it's easy to connect and use it to make calls or browse the net on my berry much quicker. I have unlimited minutes so I don't really care if I'm connected to UMA for calls or not, but sometimes in certain spots (like my basement at home) I get pretty crappy reception. I just connect to my router and use UMA and the call quality is so much better. Also when I travel outside the US I bring my router so I can hook it up in my hotel room or I just find wifi and make calls for free.

This is how I understand it with Tmobile. If you pay the $9.99/month for unlimited UMA then you get unlimited minutes via UMA. If you don't pay that and you have a phone that is able to use this feature you can still use it....it just pulls the minutes from your normal plan. So if you have a plan with like 400 minutes and you use alot of UMA it would be worth the extra 10 bucks.

Hope that helps a little. If you have any other questions about that or even about the Denver area feel free to ask! My pin is 20FAC83B if you want to add me to BBM.

[Mistik1973]

well most of my questions are about which provider to get.

my girl is with sprint and her contract expires 10 feb 2010. I am moving to live with her in march and we want a family plan. Purely based on data + minutes deal their 1500 min with unlimited texting/data and BB service all included for usd129.99 is a pretty good deal but she cannot get another phone then a new pearl which she already has. I could get the tour for usd200.00.

T-mobile will get me a 8900 curve and her a flip for free with a new 2 year contract but the monthly payment would be 40$ more if we would include the uma option but we would get 1800 min and also unlimited text/data with 2 new phones both with wifi

In the end I think the sprint deal would be better, but still doubting abt t-mobile. Their coverage does not seem strong outside denver though. Whats your experience?

[Mistik1973]

I guess it also depends if my girl wants a new phone or not

[vdubguy2k]

From what I have found as long as you are in the city or most surrounding areas then Tmobile is fine. I have a Treo with Verizon as my work phone and have found when I go up in the mountains or to certain areas outside the city my tmobile berry won't get very good reception and can't make calls. My Verizon phone is able to though....so I can vouch for the fact that Tmobile doesn't have the best overall network as far as coverage goes. I do like Tmobile for their UMA option and the overall price of the service. So...I guess it kinda depends on what your needs are!

[Mistik1973]

thanks! we will have to see which new BB's T-mobile and sprint will get as well. And perhaps sprint will make a nice offer

[spirehealth]

I really like T-Mobile's UMA option. Just remember that it doesn't have to necessarily be a T-Mobile hot spot. It can be any open wi-fi connection. When I'm in a wi-fi area I usually save the profiles so that the next time I'm near the signal the BB just jumps right on.

It's also great for home if you have wireless as I can go into the farthest corner of the basement away from any windows and still get a great connection.

[Mistik1973]

do you need to start it up yourself everytime? or will it automatically choose a wifi connection?

[hubermania]

For every new HotSpot you need to set up that WiFi network's SSID in your phone. Once that's done, your phone will use that HotSpot whenever you walk in range.

AFAIK all the TMo HotSpots use the same SSID, which is already programmed in your phone. I have my three best friends' WiFi SSIDs in my phone so it switches when I hang out there. At hotels I always sniff out their free WiFi and add the SSID.

Some places you have to accept Terms Of Service to use that HotSpot. After you set up that WiFi SSID, open your browser and click on the WiFi HotSpot Login bookmark. Accept the terms and you're good to go for 24hrs or whatever that HotSpot's lease time is.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Mistik1973]

excellent! thanks for the clear explanation. Is it hard to set up the SSID on your BB? I have a 8310 Curve so no wifi yet.

My girl has wifi at home so this would save us on the minutes. We could do with less shared minutes.

[hubermania]

My Flip is running 4.6, it's really easy to set up a new access point. Go to Manage Connections, WiFi Options, then click Menu->New. There's an option to Scan For Networks, that's what I always use. It takes like a minute to set up a new WiFi spot.

Friends' WEP/WPA spots are only slightly more complicated, you just have to enter the passcode.

My wife uses 1,000 weekday UMA minutes a month. We usually only use 300-400 of our 700 anytime minutes.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Mistik1973]

yeah so you use less minutes. A lot of calls are made from home anyway.

[iwalker]

Originally Posted by spirehealth

I really like T-Mobile's UMA option. Just remember that it doesn't have to necessarily be a T-Mobile hot spot. It can be any open wi-fi connection. When I'm in a wi-fi area I usually save the profiles so that the next time I'm near the signal the BB just jumps right on.

It's also great for home if you have wireless as I can go into the farthest corner of the basement away from any windows and still get a great connection.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

I have T-Mobile's UMA option and I have wireless at home, I don't have data package. I want to use my wi-fi at home, I have two laptops hooked up with no problem, when I list my wi-fi and try to view internet is says I am unable to connect. Does anyone no why BB8900

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[vdubguy2k]

Originally Posted by iwalker

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

I have T-Mobile's UMA option and I have wireless at home, I don't have data package. I want to use my wi-fi at home, I have two laptops hooked up with no problem, when I list my wi-fi and try to view internet is says I am unable to connect. Does anyone no why BB8900

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Try opening your browser, click on the blackberry button, choose "options" then "browser configuration" ...up top where it says "browser:" change that to "Hotspot Browser", click the blackberry button again and choose "save options". From there you should be good to use your browser on the wifi without the data plan.

I found that when I had to do this in the past I would have to do that a couple times to get it to work but it eventually did.