Sprint Airave Lets You Make Calls Over The Internet - July 15th
Wayne @ GearDiary caught wind that the Sprint Airave will be released July 15th. I actually saw a demo of this at the Sprint corporate offices a few months back and it was beautiful. The Airave is essentially a mini cellphone tower that routes all of your calls over the internet. Kind of like UMA but without the WiFi part.
This would save you money on calls and give you reception in locations where you might not have. While I was at Sprints corporate offices I asked them if I could use the Airave while traveling. I was sad to learn that it has a built in GPS chip that only lets it work where Sprint has coverage!!! SUCKS. You also need to keep the device near a window so it can get a GPS fix.
You will need to pay for an extra service to use the Airave. According to Wayne this should be $15 for an individual or $30 for a family. You do get unlimited calling over the internet with the plan so its not a terrible deal.
Pretty interesting stuff. I think they need to lower the price and lose the GPS restriction. Check it out on Sprints site at this link.
Sprint via SprintUsers via GearDiary via BoyGenius via Speedy Gonzalez via Juan Valdez …..
You can follow any responses to this entry through the Comments Feed. Leave A Trackback..
Previous Post: RIM Pushing BlackBerrys To Students - Is There A Demand? »
Next Post: RANT! $1,310 Per Megabyte For Text Messages »
Related Reading:
- Sprint’s Airave Mini Cell Tower Now Available
- Latest OS 4.3 For Sprint 8130 Fixes Memory Leak & Data Connection
- Internet Access On Planes? The Question Of How
July 2nd, 2008 12:59
OR you can use tmo’s service for $10 bucks a month and get unlimited UMA calling, without the gps/only being able to use it in a tmo coverage area clause. And its $10 for an individual or your whole family plan… Sprint’s version sounds like an over priced rip off of tmos talk forever mobile.
July 2nd, 2008 15:01
This is a femtocell, a similar concept to UMA but not really.
Sprint has been trialing these in a couple places USA for several months now. I think it’s a really cool concept, install your own mini cell phone site, but an issue that come to MY mind is would there be any personal liability if someone did something illegal on their device while connected via your femtocell (which is connected to the world via your high speed internet service)??? And with companies like Cox and Comcast looking to throttle our cable modem services, someone connecting to your femtocell could use up a bunch of cable modem bandwidth that not only do you have to pay Sprint for the femto but you have to pay your ISP for the data backhaul, and I can’t see that the cable companies would be all too excited about bunches of cellular femtocells using their backbones for phone call carriage (when they are trying to market that themselves!).
July 2nd, 2008 23:00
Yeah it is way too expensive! I just thought it would be cool to be able to setup your own celltower site…
July 3rd, 2008 00:46
But can you get it without paying the monthly fee? I need it because I get crap coverage in my apartment, but since I have the SE plan I don’t need unlimited calling.
Also I don’t thing the cable companies have much to worry about. Voice calls take up very little bandwidth.
July 30th, 2008 00:30
[...] has finally released the Airave home cellphone tower that we mentioned before. The price is still too high in my opinion but the idea is very interesting. PhoneScoop just let us [...]