Hybrid acts as cellphone, but hops to home wireless network
Jim Jamieson
Province
What is it? Motorola Z6w Wi-Fi-enabled mobile phone
Price: Starts at $60 on a three-year contract with FIDO and an UNO subscription.
Why you need it: You wonder why you’re paying for a land line when you’re doing more and more calling on your mobile phone.
Why you don’t: You can’t quite wrap your head around the idea of combining the two.
Our rating: Three mice
W ith mobile-phone usage continuing to climb, a growing number of people –especially younger ones — are not bothering to have a land line in their home.
Of course, the downside to exclusive use of a mobile as your phone is the cost — still outrageously high here in Canada — compared with the unlimited usage of a land line.
Wireless provider Fido recently launched a hybrid approach to this conundrum.
It’s a system that allows the customer to use one handset for both applications.
How does it work?
It’s through the Wi-Fi -enabled Motorola Z6w mobile phone — which functions as a regular cell phone but can hop onto a home wireless network to connect to the Internet and make a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phone call.
VOIP calls essentially mimic land line calls and and these services are typically even cheaper than a traditional land line.
The idea is to let consumers seamlessly switch from their cellular at home to save minutes, and money, on their mobile plan.
The Z6w will operate on Fido’s UNO service, which provides VOIP services. You can use your own existing wireless router or buy one from Fido that is optimized for voice.
The VOIP service costs $15 a month for unlimited local calls . . . or $20 a month for unlimited local and Canadian long-distance calls at home.
Of course, a high-speed Internet connection — which most of us have anyway — is needed.
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© The Vancouver Province 2008
