As I wrote, there must be some of this somewhere in the USA, and look what /. brought up when I looked today:

  http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/10/tmobile

The article and the comments are relevant. It seems to be exactly the way I wrote it. 'Cancellation fees' up to the sky. I have no problem with that company but the case illustrates the problem and its ramifications. Meanwhile the 'new' breed of triple-phones advances with small steps. By triple I mean DECT+WiFi+GSM. Here is an example (ironically, from t-online):

  http://www.netzwelt.de/news/74532-im-test-das-tonehandy-tc.html

(note: article is in German. Sorry about that). Of course that phone is 'locked' the GSM network of t-one and to the Wifi/VoIp service of the same company as far as I know. t-one is/was the parent company of t-mobile in Europe and is probably holding the US daughter company.

For the impatient/Babelfish allergic, the article describes a DECT-Wifi-GSM capable phone with all the usual functions (WAP, WWW, browser etc) in cell phone format. I believe that there will be a lot more of these in the future. The iPhone already has 2 of the three required functions: Wifi and GSM. 

There are also other VoIp WiFi phones that start to have a normal (POTS) connection (usually using DECT to communicate with the charger/stand/base station/POTS adapter). The technology is still new and the software has some hair raising bugs (SIP == Severely Impairing Problems) but it will likely come out clean of its teething troubles soon. Having three different phones, one for DECT, one for GSM and one for ViFi is getting really old.

Peter



       
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