(Associated Press via NewsEdge) T-Mobile USA is set to launch by year's end a new breed of mobile phones that can pass live phone calls between cellular and Wi-Fi networks, a top executive said.
Robert Dotson, CEO of the US subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, declined to disclose the specific market where T-Mobile planned to introduce the technology, known as UMA.
But he did say it would likely be 'a city near and dear to our hearts,' a likely reference to the company's home city of Seattle.
UMA is designed to hand off calls without interruption from a cell network to a Wi-Fi router, or vice versa. So if a user arrives home while talking on a cell phone and the handset detects a Wi-Fi broadband connection in the house, the call is automatically switched to the wireless Internet signal.
The only difference is that the call is then transmitted using VoIP.
T-Mobile has previously acknowledged it was testing UMA, which can help ease the burden on the limited call capacity of a cellular network while also providing users a stronger wireless signal when they're inside a building.
Dotson said the company will offer handsets comparably priced to mobile phones but declined to say how much the service will cost.
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