new contract & UMA enabled phones on Orange, help please!

AbbieCadabra

our business contract (only 2 users) is due for upgrade & the guy who sorted our contracts last time has suggested the Samsung Galaxy Apollo i5801 for me, but i'm not sure this will be really suitable...

my wish list -
would really like to try the UMA facility to see if it helps with our poor in-house signal (our wireless broadband is only 1mb which i don't think will be an issue?),
capacitive touchscreen,
large'ish screen,
would prefer Samsung as that's what i've used for years,
&, shock horror, it's mainly used as a phone - so must have good quality reception/sound etc.!

it won't be used for - any web surfing, facebook etc., emails, games, music (perhaps the odd photo or 2 will be taken).

gps/sat nav type gizmo might be an added bonus, as long as it doesn't need to be connected to the net whilst it's being used (sorry, i don't know much about this option! ).

our contracts guy has suggested a plan with Orange that includes unlimited internet & email, but i think this costs about £15 a month extra to the basic plan cost. i have already said i won't really be using it for anything online, but i don't know if these smartphones 'need' the net for other 'stuff' even if i won't be actually choosing to go online - confused? i am!

thanks for reading

Toe-Jam

Hi I have the UMA on my Blackberry phone, I thought it would be a good idea to change to orange because I have no service on most networks at my home.

If you are relying exclusively on UMA for your service at home , like me. I would say forget it its very unreliable it doesn't work half the time and disconnects randomly leaving you without service so no one can get through to you. When it is working, a 1mb line is fine it only uses about 100kB but it is more not working than working.

Vodafone have a similar thing which is called suresignal, I don't know if it is any better or any worse. But you are not limited to blackberry handsets with that one.

Bettingmad

I would also be wary, I am also with Orange and have had use of a UMA enabled phone for 18mths (BB 8900). I thought it would be the answer to my lack of signal at home. My experience is also that it is less than perfect. Constant dropping of calls, very poor clarity where it has been difficult to have a conversation. I escalated this during my initial weeks where I was informed by the Executive Office that UMA needs a stable connection of a minimum of 3 MB to be effective. My line was nearly always over 3 MB but it made little difference. It has been better than nothing as I have no network signal at home.
In short I wouldn't rely on it to give you a a fully functioning signal, you will often be left frustrated during a long contract.
You would be better of changing networks.

AbbieCadabra

thanks for the replies

UMA won't be a necessity as we have a landline too, it would just be nice to be able to make business calls during the day without having to wander around the house waving my phone in the air trying to get a signal!

it's weird, since i've been looking at this option, my orange signal has been great in the house - do you think i've scared it?!

Bettingmad

• Have you signed up into everything everywhere? where your phone will switch onto T-mobile.

coolesticeking

I have 3 BlackBerry Handsets all using UMA for over 2 years and not had a problem with this at all - BlackBerry 8900's & 8520 Curves.

Do you have any Firewalls or anything else running on the router stopping the ports the UMA requires to work? I had to configure my router to begin with just to allow the UMA address and never had one call drop or anything?

Bettingmad

coolesticeking wrote: »

I have 3 BlackBerry Handsets all using UMA for over 2 years and not had a problem with this at all - BlackBerry 8900's & 8520 Curves.

Do you have any Firewalls or anything else running on the router stopping the ports the UMA requires to work? I had to configure my router to begin with just to allow the UMA address and never had one call drop or anything?

This has never been explained to me by anyone in Orange, when my phone is in range of my Livebox it automatically displays UMA on the phone. I assumed that was it, did you have to configure it due be being unable to pick up UMA?

coolesticeking

When I had a BT Phoneline and the router that came from my ISP then (AOL) never had a problem with UMA to start with, used to connect to UMA and never had to configure the router itself.

Made the move to Virgin Media but the router they supplied it didn't like to pick up the UMA at all (Tearing hair out with Orange saying "As soon as it finds Wi-Fi which it was, it would just switch to UMA without any problems at all)... This was not the case!

So I thought a little, and did some digging of my own and found that some routers don't like the port numbers UMA runs at and blocks them meaning of course either the calls drop or the service does not work at all...

In the end I just put the following details into my router to bypass the internal firewall and all has been fine since.

Requires Ports: 500, 4500, 50 & 51
Hostnames: singlephone.orange.co.uk &
unc.singlephone.orange.co.uk:14001
IP Address: 193.35.136.240 /28

Of course it can also bring the ISP you use into question also if your calls keep dropping and the above does not work for you. Capicity issues, traffic shaping and even the ISP themselves blocking these ports.

AbbieCadabra

Bettingmad wrote: »

• Have you signed up into everything everywhere? where your phone will switch onto T-mobile.

yes, mine & OH. he went to work & said his phone had switched to t-mobile, so we know it works.

i had a look on OFCOM i think it was for mast locations & the nearest one to our home is orange.

AbbieCadabra

coolesticeking wrote: »

I have 3 BlackBerry Handsets all using UMA for over 2 years and not had a problem with this at all - BlackBerry 8900's & 8520 Curves.

Do you have any Firewalls or anything else running on the router stopping the ports the UMA requires to work? I had to configure my router to begin with just to allow the UMA address and never had one call drop or anything?

we haven't actually tried a UMA phone yet, but the extra info you've provided might come in very handy! thanks

AbbieCadabra

for anyone looking at UMA or similar, T-Mobile advised me today that they starting a new service early next year - nextivity repeater cell. there's a little more info in this article