T-Mobile Wifi calling app for Android

[ponyo]

Anyone use Wifi Calling for Android on T-Mobile? It worked great on the home wifi but I tried to use it when I was down at Port St Joe, Florida and couldn't get it to work at a public wifi. The wifi signal was strong so no problem there but I got unable to connect error when trying to connect to the T-mobile server. I know Vibrant isn't officially supported yet for Wifi Calling but I had no problem using it at home.

Anyone with G2 or MT4G tested it outside their home? T-mobile coverage isn't so great in remote areas and this would be so handy in those areas.

 

[vshah]

did you try browsing to a website w/ the public wifi? many of them require you to accept a user agreement before the router will allow you access to the internet.

before you accept, all dns requests are forwarded to the router's accept page. sometimes, even after you accept, the dns requests for the tmobile wifi calling servers would be sent to the router's ip.

whenever I connect to a public wifi, i first go to some site I don't care about like yahoo, to get to the router's accept page. after i get access there, other services on my phone like gtalk/wifi calling work flawlessly.

 

[ponyo]

I think I did accept the user agreement. I didn't notice the page first but after the Wifi calling didn't work, I opened my browser and saw the notice. I accepted the agreement and tried again but still didn't work. Maybe the router needed to be on a specific channel. I don't know. Could be my error. You said you got it work so I guess it was user error. I'll try again somewhere else. Thanks.

 

[vshah]

I think I did accept the user agreement. I didn't notice the page first but after the Wifi calling didn't work, I opened my browser and saw the notice. I accepted the agreement and tried again but still didn't work. Maybe the router needed to be on a specific channel. I don't know. Could be my error. You said you got it work so I guess it was user error. I'll try again somewhere else. Thanks.

what might have happened is this:

1. you connect to the wifi and try launching the wifi calling app. the app tries to reach some server , say uma.tmobile.com however since you haven't yet accepted the agreement, the router's dns sends it to 192.168.1.1 (the router's IP)

2. you realize you haven't accepted yet, so you launch the browser and click accept. you can now browse sites.

3. you go back to the wifi calling app and try again. however, the dns response may have been cached. so even though you have accepted agreement, uma.tmobile.com still goes to the router's IP.

restarting the phone might have helped, or manually flushing the dns cache. this is why whenever I connect to public wifi I launch some page I don't care about in order to get the the public wifi agreement.

 

[ponyo]

Makes sense. I'll try it again at a local McDonalds. I was psyched to use the feature as I was down there for 5 days with almost no cell signal whatsoever. I had to communicate strictly using text messages.

 

[vshah]

Makes sense. I'll try it again at a local McDonalds. I was psyched to use the feature as I was down there for 5 days with almost no cell signal whatsoever. I had to communicate strictly using text messages.

definitely get a google voice account, unless you have unlimited texting. i use gv for all my texting now. granted I only really text a couple people so it wasn't a big deal to give them my GV number.