Late last month, Larry wandered down the hall to chat with colleagues who cover wireless services to find out about the latest and greatest mobile devices. And the office buzz was not (as expected) about the new iPhone from Apple; rather the analysts and internal IT team were checking out the new T-Mobile HotSpot @Home service.

T-Mobile’s service is a fixed mobile convergence service that offers wireless voice connections over the T-Mobile GSM/GPRS/EDGE network, T-Mobile HotSpots, and a user’s in-home Wi-Fi connection.

Calls made to and from an @Home HotSpot or any of T–Mobile’s 8,500 retail HotSpot locations use the Wi-Fi connection so callers don’t get charged minutes of use. When customers leave home or exit a T-Mobile HotSpot, their calls transfer onto T-Mobile’s cellular network, and calls also transfer from T- Mobile’s network onto Wi-Fi.

T-Mobile’ service is supported with a dual mode phone (currently only the Samsung t409 and the Nokia 6086 support the service) and each phone retails for $49.99 with a qualifying plan. D-Link and Linksys Wi-Fi routers are recommended for the HotSpot @Home service for simple setup, enhanced handset battery, and voice call quality; each is currently offered at no charge with the a mail-in rebate. The service can be added to any qualifying T-Mobile voice plan for only $9.99 per month for a single line, and $19.99 per month for up to five lines on a family plan.

While it’s clear that this T-Mobile plan isn’t targeted to the enterprise market, it does open the door for some interesting possibilities – especially since T-Mobile doesn’t own a broadband wireline retail business. Unlike AT&T or Verizon, which have wireline voice businesses, and Vonage, which has a VoIP business to protect, T-Mobile may have much to gain in advancing FMC and the T-Mobile model may prove to be interestingly disruptive.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.