On Thursday, Bellevue-based T-Mobile will start offering wired phone service for $10 a month, plus taxes and fees, to its wireless subscribers in the Seattle area.The service, called Talk Forever Home Phone, will provide unlimited local and domestic long distance calls. It will piggyback on the customer’s high-speed Internet connection, in much the same way voice-over-Internet providers like Vonage Holdings Corp. sell phone service.
Customers will need to buy T-Mobile’s Internet router for $50 when signing up. The router has two phone jacks where standard corded or cordless home phones can be plugged in. An existing home number can be transferred to the new service.
Subscribers will also need to be signed up for a wireless plan costing at least $39.99 a month.
In a similar vein, T-Mobile last summer launched the HotSpot AtHome program, which allows subscribers to place calls over their Internet connection using special Wi-Fi-equipped cell phones. That plan also costs $10 a month for unlimited calls.
In both cases, T-Mobile is trying to get more people to give up their traditional landlines, but the new plan allows them to keep the familiar home phones as well as the home number.
T-Mobile hasn’t revealed how many people have signed up for HotSpot AtHome, but David Beigie, T-Mobile’s vice president of marketing, said it has “blown away internal estimates.” [24×7]
Allen Social Networking On the “Radar”
Radar Networks, a new Paul Allen-backed Internet search startup, has added $13 million to its coffers in a second round of venture funding.
The company is working on product called twine, which provides a social search context for helping people share, organizer and discover information about specific interests. The company says that Twine “automatically organizes information, learns about users’ interests and makes connections and recommendations.” Led by EarthWeb founder Nova Spivack– the company has this far raised a total of $18 million. [24×7]
