I’ve used T-Mobile’s recently discontinued T-Mobile@Home service since it launched in 2008.  I’ve found it reliable and cost-effective.  For $10/month our home phone service was unlimited and came in handy especially when I had to dial into long conference calls or webinars.

The one thing about the T-Mobile At Home service is that you had to use the T-Mobile Linksys WRT54G-TM Router.  It looks just like any other Linksys box except for two SIM slots in the back.  For two years I had nearly flawless service (the early days had a lot of connection dropped / no blue light issues) but the service worked.

Last week, out of nowhere, the phone just stopped connecting to T-Mobile.  The router was running firmware 1.21 and the admin screen showed SIM NOT_REGISTERED.  I tried another SIM card from another call phone and same result.  The internet connection on the router worked fine.

I called T-Mobile and went through their checklist and was then told I would be forwarded to Linksys/Cisco for further support.  I spoke to Linksys and once I told them I had an active Internet connection, just no phone connection, they told me that their only obligation is to get the router online.

Linksys said a higher-level engineer would call back with 48 hours.

In those few days I tried several things, but with no luck.  I even purchased a router off eBay for $18 just to have a backup (or replacement).  At this point T-Mobile couldn’t help much since they blamed the router.  Linksys couldn’t help because I could connect to the Internet.

At this point I read a few posts about how the router’s firmware used to be an issue.  The firmware version I was on, 1.21, didn’t have any negative reviews.  But after a long search online I found a firmware version 1.15.  I flashed the router with the older firmware and won’t you know it… IT WORKED.

(I did try reflashing 1.21 with 1.21 earlier, but it didn’t fix anything)

Since this service is no longer available to new subscribers I am not sure if this is how support will be going forward.   Just in case, I stored the $18 eBay router as a backup and I suggest that if you like the T-Mobile@Home service, you might want to think about buying a backup router too.