If you got here via a Google search, then you may prefer to read one of the following articles instead:
* Analysis: iPhone and the emergence of convergence
* Which way: Femtocells or UMA?
* Could UMA be the iPhone’s “one more thing”?
Cheers..
It’s a service that few people seem to know about. When I bought my first T-Mobile Blackberry a few years ago, I was delighted and surprised to see that I was able to use the phone’s WiFi capability to make a FREE phone call over WiFi, whenever I was able to access a WiFi network. It made sense – after all, Internet access is available very readily in most places I ever am, so why not offload the bandwidth of cell phone calls from cell towers over to the much larger pipes of hardwired Internet connections, via WiFi.
The technology is called UMA. It’s been available on T-Mobile smart phones since 2007, I believe. You know, since back in the Stone Age, before multi-touch touch screens were even imagined. 
If you’ve ever owned, or known someone who has owned, an iPhone, you probably know that a common customer complaint is that the AT&T cell network (which, I believe, is the only one that your iPhone can use) just does not support the needs of its customers. To add insult to difficulty, AT&T does not support UMA, and even blocks a kludgy work-around – Skype. Bizarro, but I guess it works for them. 
In today’s New York Times business section, there’s an article which talks about a fascinating new technology that is sure to sky-rocket in the coming years. [sarcasm] An amazing way to connect your iPhone to your home WiFi connection [sarcasm] so that, for example, you can still make cell phone calls at home if AT&T does not provide cell coverage at your home.
UMA? No.
Instead, the article describes expensive little devices that you can buy and install in your home, to add the same feature that T-Mobile’s smart phones have included for several years – the ability to make a cell phone call over your existing WiFi connection.
Free calls over that expensive little device? No.
Instead, you pay for those calls – again, different from T-Mobile’s standard set of features.
But it’s actually a MiFi, right? So it allows me to take my cell connection anywhere? No. This is not MiFi we’re talking about. MiFi is completely different. This is called a “Mini-Tower” or a “femtocell”. Verizon apparently also offers them, for about $250. We’re talking here about just getting your d*rned iPhone to work in places where even a MiFi would not work. Besides, even if you added a Verizon MiFi device (not the Verizon “femtocell”) and were able to thereby bring a cell connection to your AT&T dead spot, without T-Mobile’s UMA or the expensive little femtocell, your iPhone is still talkless.
I know technology is complicated, and large network deployment and maintenance is costly. But unless consumers demand better features from their various connectivity providers, those better features may never come.
Oh, and why is it exactly that you can’t just hook-up an iPhone with T-Mobile service? There a reason for that??
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