UMA calling is probably one of the best features T-Mobile offers on some of their devices. For those not familiar with it, in simple terms, it provides a way to make calls via wi-fi. With T-Mobile's HotSpot at Home service, all calls made that way are free (if you have the optional service added to your plan). What's nice though, is even without the plan, you can make calls that way, and the minutes are counted just as they would be if they were placed over the cellular network. The benefit is that you can get signal most anywhere there's wi-fi, which includes, home, work, etc. It stands for Unlicensed Mobile Access, and more can be found about it here:
T-Mobile leaves a big gap in UMA capable devices, and I have no idea why. For example, if you want a full QWERTY phone with UMA, it'll have to be a BlackBerry. I was disappointed to find that though T-Mo has added a lot of nice features in the soon to be released Sidekick 2009 (3G, for example), there's no wi-fi/UMA. This would have been a great feature for that phone, and one that would have made it an almost "must have" device.
UMA is a feature that no other US carrier has (to my knowledge), and one that truly sets the T-Mobile apart from the crowd. Why not capitalize on it, and add it to all devices? Come on T-Mobile. Your network and handset lineup is getting better every day, and your reputation with respect to customer service is the best in the business. I have no doubt that you'd grab a lot more subscribers by more aggressively marketing UMA, and adding it to every device.
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