T-Mobile USA to roll out UMA in 2006?
It's almost kind of an open secret at this point that T-Mobile, one of the primary backers of the UMA standard, is planning to trial it on their US cell and WiFi networks in the near future. But we got a little further confirmation from a PC Mag piece on Philips' new Nexperia 6120 chipset. Though apparently Philips wouldn't identify who their UMA carrier partner is, the new chipset -- which integrates 802.11g into a single cell chip package -- is apparently already in Samsung's SGH-T709 (which does indeed have WiFi and that menu we saw before that revealed something about a T-Mobile wireless router). But seriously, what more evidence do we need on this one? A phone like the T709 is already amply posed to take advantage of T-Mo's recently restructured all-in-one unlimited wireless data package that gets you WiFi on T-Mobile hotspots and EDGE data for $30 a month. Is T-Mobile actually going to break new ground in 2006 with seamless WiFi / cellular UMA handoffs? No, we still can't say for sure, but signs continually seem to point to yes.
