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On the surface the Republic Wireless deal looks pretty appealing. $19.00 a month. Unlimited calling. Well, not exactly as IntoMobile's Stefan Constantinescu has pointed out.

If you spend most of your time inside, then all the talking and data over WiFi is for you. But the limits outside the WiFi cloud will work against you. Basically, Republic is a nice home phone service that fills the gap that T-Mobile created when they stopped selling a $10.00 a month @Home phone service back in 2010.

So if T-Mobile was able to sell the service for $10.00 what does the other $9.00 a month get you. Well as Stefan points out, not much more.

"550 minutes, 150 text messages, and 300 megabytes of data per month while not attached to a WiFi connect, otherwise you get kicked off their network."

Over the past few weeks I've been tracking my iPhone and iPad data usage on networks while in Europe. On average every five days or so I'm running between 200 and 300 megs of data on the cellular networks, not counting what happens on hotel or friends houses WiFi Networks.

This looks on the surface like a good deal, but it really falls into the category of knowing what your usage patterns are like. It may be good for some, but not for heave mobile (and away from WiFi) power users. I think they have a niche, the only problem is it's a niche that may not be able to really take their service with them. I applaud the folks at Bandwidth.com for taking a stab at being the first Fixed Mobile Convergence play to really take on the market, so this is a very good "beta" as they are calling it. But for FMC to really happen, it needs more on the data side to fly.

Ironically, Verizon Wireless just began offering double the data deals today for smartphones. It's a nice counter to Sprint's iPhone unlimited play.

Tags:  month really service mobile networks their while iphone niche surface