T-Mobile, who had a terrible Q1 in which they saw nearly 100,000 customers leave their network, is set to introduce some new services this month. First, and the most appealing, is free WiFi calling. Here’s how it works: If you’re a customer with a phone that has WiFi, you can connect to your home network and then start making and receiving calls, but instead of said calls being routed through the cell towers around your house, the call goes through your broadband connection. This feature used to cost money and worst of all it took away from the minutes that you already paid for every month. Now it’s going to be free. No monthly fee, and no deduction from the minutes in your plan. Second is voicemail transcription. Visual voicemail, first seen on the iPhone, is now available on a wide range of devices, but let’s be serious, voicemail is terrible. Now instead of having to dial in and listen to someone talk for 3 minutes, their message will be transcribed and then sent to you. Finally there’s “Name ID”, which takes “Caller ID” to the next level by searching for the number that’s dialing you in the phone book and then displaying that person’s name and address.
The free WiFi feature should be going live today, and the other two features will be available by the 22nd. Are they going to be enough to bring people back to T-Mobile or is something else going to have to happen? We sure hope T-Mobile starts getting more 21 Mbps HSPA+ enabled phones, and expands their 4G network. There are rumors floating around that AT&T will launch their LTE network in June/July, and once that happens expect even more customers to leave T-Mobile. Then again T-Mobile might not even exist by this time next year if the AT&T acquisition is approved.