Right now if you own a T-Mobile SDA SmartPhone (which is relatively
affordable at $149 with contract, or roughly $399 without) you have a
WiFi capable phone that will run mobile Skype, an affordable VoIP
software that allows you to make phone calls for free or with nominal
fees to lan and mobile phones.... This means if you're living on campus
or you work/live in a city with multiple hotspots you don't even need
T-Mobile's service... Providing the device had the proper unlocks, you
could use it as a WiFi phone. If you're a college student living on
campus this could mean hundreds of dollars a month in savings on your
cell phone bill. Same could be said of the business user, however the
question there is it is WiFi stable enough.

There's a movement underway in the US being dubbed "Mu-Fi" or Municipal
WiFi, where local municipalities take on a portion of, or all of the
cost to put a free broadband WiFi infrastructure in place for the
community. So when this becomes common place (and eventually it will),
the question is what will this mean for cell providers? How will they
adjust their billing structure to accommodate this and what steps will
they take to try and stop their customers from bypassing their
overpriced, poorly supported service.

I believe the wheels are already spinning.... The T-Mobile SDA and the
Cingular 2125 are essentially the same phone, they are both made by HTC
and have similar features. In fact the only real difference aside from
the cosmetic changes is that the SDA has a WiFi radio while Cingular
opted to leave this feature out of the Cingular 2125, even through the
vendors other similar models supported WiFi. I believe as is often the
case, Cingular's decision to leave the WiFi capability out of the 2125
was more strategic than economic... but this strategy won't work
forever.

Anyone who makes cell calls predominately inside WiFi hotspots would be
wise to invest in a T-Mobile SDA with T-Mobile contract, if you're
already locked into a Cingular contract (or you just don't like
T-Mobile), buy the device unlocked or have it unlocked. The SDA
supports the same GSM bands as the 2125, and reportedly works perfectly
fine on Cingular's network when unlocked.

Even without a WiFi, if you own a Cingular 2125, Audiovox SMT5600,
8125, or similar SmartPhone/Windows Mobile based PDA that supports EDGE
you can leverage Cingular's MediaNET unlimited Internet data connect
package and for $20/month use Skype on your phone to save minutes...

http://www.skype.com/download/skype/mobile/

Cell providers should take note, US customers are getting fed up with
their ridiculous practices. There is no other public services industry
that I see so blatantly unethical in the way they operate (speaking in
general) and without so much as a handslap. I for one would love to
see something like this become a real threat, maybe then we would get
some things like: clear pricing models, unlocked handsets that work on
whatever provider you want and without any "locking" restrictions,
fixed rate plans. We can dream anyway.




See More: VoIP and Mu-Fi, the future of cell phone service?