刘志存
不想在家中随身带着手机,可家人和朋友又常常会拨打自己的手机,如何是好?T-Mobile最近推出的一项服务便帮助人们解决了这个麻烦。
The poor landline home phone is getting less and less respect. Increasing numbers of people dont even have traditional landline phone service any more. These folks prefer to rely on their cellphones, which can be cheaper to use and carry a number that travels with a person instead of being locked to a house.
Many others keep their landline-phone service grudgingly, only because it is needed for things like fax machines. But even they often use their cellphones at home, because their friends and family members dial their cellphone number routinely, and their personal phone books are inside their cellphones.
But there is a big drawback to using a cellphone at home, especially in a large house. You have to schlep it around with you from room to room. By contrast, landline phone service can be used via either cordless or corded extension phones. Now, T-Mobile, one of the big U.S. cellphone companies, is rolling out a new system that it hopes to make cellphone service at home more convenient and even cheaper to use.
The service, being introduced this month in two test cities, Seattle and Dallas, allows you to use a cellphone account with any corded or cordless home phone, with multiple extensions, for just $10 a month. That very low price gets you unlimited domestic calls.
This new T-Mobile service, tentatively called Talk Forever Home Phone, is likely to be available nationally in a few months. It works via a special Wi-Fi wireless router that you must buy, with a two-year contract, for a one-time charge of $50. The router, which can either replace or supplement your existing wireless router, is essentially a stationary cellphone that marries an in-home Wi-Fi network to the T-Mobile cellphone network.
手机在家打出新花样
人们对家用固定电话的兴趣越来越低了,许多人现在甚至已不再使用传统的固定电话了。这些人宁愿依靠他们的手机。手机不但资费便宜,并且还能在外出时随身携带,而不仅仅只限于在家中使用。
还有许多人勉强保留着固定电话,原因只是传真机等设备离不开它。但即使是这些人也常常在家中使用手机,因为他们的朋友或家人通常会拨打他们的手机,这些人的联系方式也都存在手机中。
但在家中,尤其是有不少房间的大房子中使用手机有一个明显的不足之处:你到哪个房间时都需要随身带着手机。而固定电话则可以通过布置分机在各个房间中使用。如今,美国最大的手机公司之一T-Mobile推出了一种新系统,能让用户在家中更方便,甚至更便宜地使用手机。
此项服务将于本月在西雅图和达拉斯两个城市进行测试,这种服务可让人们通过家中的有绳或无绳电话及其多个分机使用其手机号码,每月仅收费10美元。这个很低的价格可以让你无限制地拨打国内电话。
这种服务暂时命名为Talk Forever Home Phone,几个月内就可能会在全美推广。你需要签订两年期合约,一次性掏出50美元购买一个特制的Wi-Fi无线路由器。这种路由器实际上就是将室内Wi-Fi网络同T-Mobile手机网络结合到一起的静止手机,它可以代替你现有的路由器,或是一同使用。