This guest post has been written by (the one and only) CoolioJones from My New Hustle.

Technology is wonderful…when it works.

As part of a promotion I won from the company, I’ve had the opportunity to use T-Mobile’s new wireless service — specifically targeted for home use – for about a month now, and the verdict is in: wait until the technology is perfected before you take the plunge.

The service is called ‘T-Mobile HotSpot @Home,’ and it has great aspirations: you can use the service at home with a special phone and router, and you will enjoy phenomenal service while you are there.  When you leave your home Wi-Fi network, the service will transfer your calls seamlessly to the cellular network, and vice versa.  Additionally, all the calls you make and receive are free as long as you are on your home network! (International calls made still cost, however) Not only that, but when you connect to another Wi-Fi network, such as a T-Mobile HotSpot, all of your calls are free there as well!.  To round out these offerings, if you make a call while on a Wi-Fi network and you leave the area, when the service switches to cellular, you will not use any of your minutes!  Be careful though, because the opposite is also true: if you leave your cellular network while you’re on a call and join a Wi-Fi network, you WILL still be using your minutes, so word to the wise is hang up and call the person back to save minutes.

This is how the service is supposed to work; however, the real world has not been kind to this pioneer in the wireless industry.  In my experiences, the router that I received needed to be reset about two weeks after installation, because it suddenly stopped allowing website traffic through to my web server.  This frustrated me because routers typically sit there and do their job, but apparently this one had other plans.  Furthermore, I noticed issues when I tried to browse computers on my home network: my computers could only browse each other by name if they were on the same type of connection.  Wired connections could browse other wired connections by name, and the same for wireless connections, but a wired computer could not browse a wireless computer by name, only by IP address.  I do not know if it is specific to this type of router, or if I just got a bad one, but resetting it did not solve this issue, and it had not existed before when using my old router.

There’s more.  The service has frequently dropped calls when attempting to switch between home and cellular networks, so at times it’s not as “seamless” as advertised.  Also, the router itself (a Linksys WRT54G-TM) would drop calls while at home, and often I was in the same room so range was not an issue.  The phone that I received (Samsung SGH-T409) has many features such as Bluetooth compatibility and a camera, but still has a very cheap feel to it.  The call quality is good, but it has spontaneously rebooted itself no less than 4 times.  Samsung usually makes very good products, so I was very surprised at the performance of this one.

When the service works, it rocks.  It can save you some serious money on your telecommuting, and really make it seem like “the only phone you need.”  But until the completely work out the kinks to make it more reliable, it doesn’t make me feel much “at home.”