T-Mobile and Sony have entered into a deal which will give owners of Sony’s forthcoming mylo personal communications device up to 12 months of free Wi-Fi service from more than 7,000 T-Mobile HotSpot locations in the United States.
"The mylo personal communicator is designed to let users stay connected to their online lives when they’re away from their home network," said John Kodera, Sony’s director of product marketing for personal communication devices,, in a statement. "By offering complimentary access at thousands of T-Mobile HotSpot locations, we are giving mylo communicator users more opportunities to stay online while they’re out and about."
The Sony mylo, announced back in August, is set to debut in mid-November at a price of $350. The mylo offers a 2.4-inch LCD display, 1 GB of flash memory, mini-USB connectivity, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and integrated 802.11b wireless networking. The mylo aims to combine email, Web browsing, and instant messaging (Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger) with video playback, music features, and Skype-enabled VoIP capabilities, including Skype In and Skype Out to and from traditional phones, and Skype-to-Skype calling. Free Wi-Fi access might make the mylo a more attractive proposition for students and others already building their lives around Skype VoIP, and the mylo is already attractive to communication-savvy consumers in Wi-Fi dense areas like campuses and urban centers.
According to Sony, the complimentary Wi-Fi service via T-Mobile kicks off when a mylo user first connects to a T-Mobile hotspot; however, the promotion definitively ends on December 31, 2007, regardless of when a mylo user first connects via T-Mobile.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The announcement follows a similar arrangement T-Mobile struck with earlier this year with camera maker Nikon, offering a free year of Wi-Fi hot spot service to users of its S7c sports camera.
