Sprint Plans Update to Airave This Year Sprint Plans to Continue Support for Femtocell Tech Sprint was the first wireless carrier to embrace femtocell technology, their Airave service debuting back in 2007 and allowing unlimited mobile calls over a user's home broadband connection for an added fee. Most carriers shot femtocell technology in the foot, charging too much for the hardware, then implementing voice pricing that would up eating user voice minutes -- despite the fact the technology saves carriers money by offloading voice traffic to landline broadband networks. Sprint was one of the few that got it, giving away many units to users in poor coverage zones, and now says they've got an update to the Airave that should arrive for Sprint users sometime this year: Tarazi, VP of Sprint's network development, said the updated devices would be made available sometime this year. Samsung built Sprint's first femtocell product and Airvana currently supplies Sprint's EV-DO Airave femtocell. Sprint began selling the Airave in 2008 (sic) and has said its goal is to distribute 1 million femtocells. Tarazi said Sprint's update to its Airave would allow the gadgets to work together to provide better coverage. He said the update would also increase the femtocell's coverage range and its capacity. Sprint says the company now has roughly 600,000 femtocells on its network -- up significantly from the 250,000 femtocells the company said they had deployed as of March 2011.
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  coldmoonPremium
join:2002-02-04
Broadway, NC
 ·Windstream
| Hope it is vastly improved... I have had an Airave for about three years now and the call quality is terrible, even standing right next to the thing. It IS however better than not having any coverage at my home which was the case prior to getting the thing in the first place...
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Returnil - 21st Century body armor for your PC | |
|  | Cogdis
join:2007-03-26
Floral Park, NY | Re: Hope it is vastly improved... said by coldmoon:I have had an Airave for about three years now and the call quality is terrible, even standing right next to the thing. It IS however better than not having any coverage at my home which was the case prior to getting the thing in the first place...
That's odd, I've had both the original 2G and now the 3G airave and they have both been literally flawless. Perfect voice quality both ways and it holds a signal all the way into my street. I'm using it with my 35/35 Mbps Verizon Fios connection which gives me a consistent connection- this is important for good voice quality. If you are already using your airave with a high quality ISP then your unit could be defective. | |
| | | coldmoonPremium
join:2002-02-04
Broadway, NC Reviews:
·Windstream
| Re: Hope it is vastly improved... said by Cogdis:said by coldmoon:I have had an Airave for about three years now and the call quality is terrible, even standing right next to the thing. It IS however better than not having any coverage at my home which was the case prior to getting the thing in the first place...
That's odd, I've had both the original 2G and now the 3G airave and they have both been literally flawless. Perfect voice quality both ways and it holds a signal all the way into my street. I'm using it with my 35/35 Mbps Verizon Fios connection which gives me a consistent connection- this is important for good voice quality. If you are already using your airave with a high quality ISP then your unit could be defective. No, my area is limited to 3mb max DSL. the range is not the issue as that is fine. It's just the call quality that has never been any good. You can call and get calls, buit the conversation will be a crapshoot and is why I prefer to use Skype as the call quality with that over the same DSL line is flawless and even better than my landline...
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Returnil - 21st Century body armor for your PC | |
| | | | | | Re: Hope it is vastly improved... said by coldmoon:said by Cogdis:said by coldmoon:I have had an Airave for about three years now and the call quality is terrible, even standing right next to the thing. It IS however better than not having any coverage at my home which was the case prior to getting the thing in the first place...
That's odd, I've had both the original 2G and now the 3G airave and they have both been literally flawless. Perfect voice quality both ways and it holds a signal all the way into my street. I'm using it with my 35/35 Mbps Verizon Fios connection which gives me a consistent connection- this is important for good voice quality. If you are already using your airave with a high quality ISP then your unit could be defective. No, my area is limited to 3mb max DSL. the range is not the issue as that is fine. It's just the call quality that has never been any good. You can call and get calls, buit the conversation will be a crapshoot and is why I prefer to use Skype as the call quality with that over the same DSL line is flawless and even better than my landline... If you can only get 3 down then the real problem is your upload. I have 3 airaves in different places, all the original model and they have been 100% flawless too. | |
| | | | | coldmoonPremium
join:2002-02-04
Broadway, NC Reviews:
·Windstream
| Re: Hope it is vastly improved... said by CTMustang:If you can only get 3 down then the real problem is your upload. I have 3 airaves in different places, all the original model and they have been 100% flawless too.
Perhaps, but oddly enough, those I talk to on the phone report they can hear me just fine, but their comm going my way is distorted and broken with missing words, etc.
Maybe it is a bad unit and the upgrade will resolve the problems - guess I need to discuss with Sprint support at the proper time, even though they have consistently told me there is nothing they could or would do in my case reports in the past...
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Returnil - 21st Century body armor for your PC | |
| | | | | | | | Re: Hope it is vastly improved... mine was the same way. Wouldn't get phone calls- the phone would ring a fast busy, i was lucky if i could call out at times. And Sprint always blammed it on the Internet. Which was funny is I tired the product on 3 different providers in 3 different areas of Ohio. Sprint refused to fix the POS. Went to TMO and was MUCH better. | |
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| | | Reviews:
·Embarq Now Centu..
| said by coldmoon:said by Cogdis:said by coldmoon:I have had an Airave for about three years now and the call quality is terrible, even standing right next to the thing. It IS however better than not having any coverage at my home which was the case prior to getting the thing in the first place...
That's odd, I've had both the original 2G and now the 3G airave and they have both been literally flawless. Perfect voice quality both ways and it holds a signal all the way into my street. I'm using it with my 35/35 Mbps Verizon Fios connection which gives me a consistent connection- this is important for good voice quality. If you are already using your airave with a high quality ISP then your unit could be defective. No, my area is limited to 3mb max DSL. the range is not the issue as that is fine. It's just the call quality that has never been any good. You can call and get calls, buit the conversation will be a crapshoot and is why I prefer to use Skype as the call quality with that over the same DSL line is flawless and even better than my landline... I've had an Airave for a year or so and the call quality is as good or better than when on a native Sprint tower. Not sure what the problem is there for you. | |
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| | Sprint Airave I've had one for about 18 months. It's worked pretty great (especially considering I had no service in my location). Initially I had some trouble with it, but after a little tweaking, improvement in my broadband (contacting provider), using a dual WAN router with redundant internet, the things works very, very well. We have a larger home and I get coverage in about 80% of it. What a life saver!
I think overall, my issues were more related to the ISP issues I had. Once I got them fixed, things have worked extremely well. So much so, my wife (who used ATT/iphone) is now going to switch to sprint with this airave. Sprint seems like they are really getting a few things right (finally)! | |
|  skidsDave RoePremium
join:2001-07-16
Newburgh, NY | Made a world of difference I have had the Airave since it was released. It works well and the quality of my calls have not been a problem.
It has been rock solid and without it I would have to basically stand at point B in the driveway with my left hand up and right foot pointed to the left to get any kind of coverage.
This was one thing Sprint did right and well in my book.
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FIRED RoadRunner .... FIOS finally arrived and it is sweet! | |
| | LukoPremium
join:2003-06-18
Pittsburg, CA | Re: Made a world of difference If you got an Airwave, I suggested you visit Sprint site to setup the allowed phone numbers. It is limited to three devices. If you have it wide open to everyone then you may not be connected. Also make sure to dial *99 to connect your phone to the Airwave.
Other than needing to do those two adjustment every thing has been fine. | |
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iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Verizon Online DSL
 ·RoadRunner Cable
·Comcast
| I want an 800MHz 1xA Airave Building LTE into the Airave would be cool and all, but it would also likely make the device expensive. Plus, any device that has LTE on Sprint also has WiFi currently (and this will probably remain the case for awhile). LTE is also data-only, so you wouldn't get voice quality/coverage improvements due to the Airave's LTE side. Oh, and if Sprint builds their network right, macrocell bandwidth could be quite a bit higher (at least on the upload side) compared to what an LTE Airave would output...I know I've seen speeds on my VZW LTE device that hit above 5 Mbps on the upload side, which unfortunately is about as high as DOCSIS 3 gets in many areas.
Adding 1x-Avanced on 800MHz to Airaves on the other hand would give the units more coverage (for compatible phones) and enable HD voice calling. ESMR-band Sprint handsets are relatively few and far between right now, but there are more of them than there are LTE phones.
Of course, the potential issue with an 800MHz Airave would be making sure that it doesn't get dominated by (or generally interfere with) iDEN signals on the same band. Not an issue if the iDEN network is gone (or never existed) in a given location, but if there's an iDEN tower nearby it's gonna interfere (yeah, iDEN is a boss like that). | |
| |  jimkPremium
join:2006-04-15
Raleigh, NC
·RoadRunner Cable
 ·voip.ms
| Re: I want an 800MHz 1xA Airave LTE can run voice (Voice over LTE - VoLTE), but to my knowledge Sprint hasn't released any plans on launching this service in the immediate future.
Regarding CDMA support for the ESMR band, this is an interesting thought and it could even be necessary for any new femtocells to support it. This post is about to get technical... sorry for the wall of text, but there's no simple way to describe some of this stuff.
If the phone has a signal from the macro network, it will have a tendency to hang on to it even in close proximity to a femtocell, unless the femtocell is running on the same exact frequency/channel that the phone is currently using. If the signal is weak enough, it might search across all channels and find the femtocell, but the phone will not do this constantly since that would drain the battery. In other words, a phone running on 800MHz (including Sprint's ESMR spectrum which is unique to them) might not pick up the femtocell running at 1900MHz as quickly as one would like. Eventually, it should, but it might take quite some time for this to happen.
To get around this, CDMA femtocells can run a beacon to help the phone find the femtocell. This is a low power signal run on all radio channels used by the macro network (obviously it has to only run within the carrier's licensed spectrum which is why GPS is important). This low power signal can tell the phone to switch to the channel that the femtocell is running on, rather than waiting on the phone to rescan or requiring changes to the phone or network which may impact battery life for all users, even those in strong macro coverage areas. The power is reduced to prevent interfearance with the macro network, and to stop distant phones from using the femtocell. That's why they often say you have to be within a few feet to register on the femtocell, but the actual coverage area once you are on it will be much greater.
What this means at the end of the day is that for Sprint to continue using Qualcomm's recommended method for cell reselection, they will probably need to release all new femtocells with support for the ESMR band. Then again, software modifications to handsets may be sufficient since only some new devices support CDMA on the ESMR band. In this case, there is no need to support legacy devices, so they might not have to have ESMR support on the femtocell if they plan on continuing to run them at 1900MHz
Here are some rather interesting technical details from Airvana and Qualcomm:
»www.airvana.com/technology/femto···hnology/
»www.qualcomm.com/media/videos/ce···iscovery
Disclaimer: I may not have 100% of these facts straight. I had to learn about this technology when I was having issues with Verizon's network, combined with issues on their femtocells. It made talking to support much easier. Between what I read on vendor sites and discussions with technicians at VZW, I think most of this is right. I can confirm that the beacon technology does work pretty close to what is described here.
My last point in this ridiculously long post... these devices are WAY more complicated than most people realize. They become part of the wireless network in a major way and can cause problems for users on the macro network if they are not run properly. I see a lot of posts claiming the carriers are screwing people by requiring GPS signal and that they use that to gouge people on international roaming... that could not be further from the truth. The carriers have to constantly maintain them and keep them working with the macro network, and make sure that they don't cause more issues than the fix. The technology is also not perfect yet. However it seems like it has come a long ways in just a few years. | |
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·Frontier Communi..
| said by jimk:My last point in this ridiculously long post... these devices are WAY more complicated than most people realize. They become part of the wireless network in a major way and can cause problems for users on the macro network if they are not run properly. I see a lot of posts claiming the carriers are screwing people by requiring GPS signal and that they use that to gouge people on international roaming... that could not be further from the truth. The carriers have to constantly maintain them and keep them working with the macro network, and make sure that they don't cause more issues than the fix.
I fail to grasp why everybody bitches about the fact that these devices still use your minutes; you are broadcasting on licensed spectrum and paying for airtime just as you would when using the macro network. What's the problem? T-Mobile gave away free calling with their UMA solution but the pitfalls (special phone needed) outweighed the gain and as far as I know they discontinued that product a long time ago.
In any case, excellent post. I read a lot of the same documents as you and came away with a newfound appreciation for the technology. Check out this document if you get a chance:
»dl.dropbox.com/u/1554229/cdma2000femto.pdf | |
| | | | jimkPremium
join:2006-04-15
Raleigh, NC Reviews:
·RoadRunner Cable
·voip.ms
| Re: I want an 800MHz 1xA Airave said by Crookshanks:I fail to grasp why everybody bitches about the fact that these devices still use your minutes; you are broadcasting on licensed spectrum and paying for airtime just as you would when using the macro network. What's the problem? T-Mobile gave away free calling with their UMA solution but the pitfalls (special phone needed) outweighed the gain and as far as I know they discontinued that product a long time ago.
In any case, excellent post. I read a lot of the same documents as you and came away with a newfound appreciation for the technology. Check out this document if you get a chance:
»dl.dropbox.com/u/1554229/cdma2000femto.pdf
I don't see a big issue with these using minutes either. For one thing, if you could get free minutes, it is likely that people who don't need these things would buy them. Femtocells are good for weak coverage areas, or to address indoor coverage due to construction related reception issues in a stronger coverage area. However, if too many people who don't need them start to use them, they will start to interfere with each other and even the macro network, especially in densely populated areas.
Regarding T-Mobile, they do have Wi-Fi calling which is a little different than UMA. However, it is still a device specific feature so it won't work if you have an unlocked Galaxy Nexus, iPhone, etc. Meanwhile, my old Motorola StarTAC can actually see my femtocell's signal and connect to 611 or other free calls (so it would work for regular calls if it was activated). This shows how flexible the technology is since that phone pre-dates the femtocell by many years.
All of your other points were good too. Finally, it is also important to keep in mind that any voice calls are still being processed through other parts of the carrier's infrastructure (such as switching). The VoIP network for the femtocells must also be maintained, including security gateways that are powerful enough to handle IPSec encryption for the VPNs that these devices operate with.
I'm not happy about having to pay $250 for one, but honestly the price isn't that bad when you think about all that goes into it. Good repeaters aren't cheap either and they have their own set of issues associated with them. Most people I know who have tried cheap home repeaters have moved on to femtocells as they become more readily available across carriers. | |
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| | Airave POS Yea yea Sprint have been saying they are going to push an update to the Airaves for months now. This is nothing new. I will believe it when I see it.
When I had it, I had all sorts of issues especially with texting. I would send out a text to someone and they would either get the beginning of it or the end of it and then they would receive several copies of it sometimes 10 or more times. It really pissed people off because they were constantly bombarded by repeats. Sometimes it wouldn't ring my phone and I wouldn't know someone called until I got their voicemail. Apparently I am not the only one having these sorts of issues. A simple browse of Sprint's forums will show all kinds of people having the exact same problems with that POS Airave.
Fortunately we are leaving Sprint. Filed a complaint with the BBB and they weren't able to resolve the other issues we were having pointed out in the complaint so they are letting us out of our contracts. See ya Sprint!! | |
| | | Dislike Airwave I bought one about 3 months back and it never worked.They could not get it activated.Spend hours on the phone.They blamed everybody under the sun.They said it was my cable provider and its connection.My connection is extremely fast.
Brigitte Grisanti | |
| | | Mine are great with one glaring exception I have an OG at home and a new model at work, they have performed flawlessy for years with one exception, not only do they not allow the MVNO's, including Sprint's own, Boost and Virgin phones to access the Airrave, if you have one of these other CDMA phones it will BLOCK them from accessing any network until they move out of range of the Airave, stupid if you ask me. | |
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