Unboxing and hands-on: Sprint's AIRAVE femtocell

by Darren Murph, posted Aug 12th 2008 at 9:15AM

Sprint's AIRAVE signal booster isn't officially on sale nationwide just yet (August 17th, for those curious), but for those anxious to pull the trigger (or merely mulling the decision), we've got a few hands-on shots to whet your appetite. The Samsung-made CDMA femtocell arrived at our doorstep today, and the packaging is about what you'd expect from Sprint: yellow, a hint of white, and more yellow. The device itself isn't too unwieldy, and it's certainly on the light side. There's definitely a port for hooking up a GPS antenna to keep users from taking this abroad and dialing up internationally (understandable, but what a bummer!), and everything else is pretty much par for the course. We'll be taking this thing for a spin here in a Sprint dead zone to see if it really lives up to the hype, but until then, feel free to peruse the gallery below.

Gallery: Hands-on: Sprint's AIRAVE signal booster

Filed under: Peripherals, Samsung, Sprint, EV-DO, CDMA

Tags: AIRAVE, features, femtocell, hands-on, samsung, signal booster, SignalBooster, sprint, ubicell, unbox, unboxed, unboxing

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Paul @ Aug 12th 2008 9:54AM

I wonder why Sprint doesn't allow you to take this overseas. I think the opposite would be a marketing hit. AT&T is heavily advertising being able to roam internationally. So how awesome would it be if a Sprint customer could actually use their phone overseas, from a hotel etc. Or even charge an extra $10 per month for the convenience and enforce it using the GPS feature.

Considering most countries only use GSM or WCDMA, this would allow them to offer a cheaper alternative.

Highest Ranked

Michael S @ Aug 12th 2008 10:37AM

Simply put because it uses licensed spectrum (1900Mhz) and can only operate in areas where Sprint actually has a license to use said spectrum. If it didn't restrict it to areas where Sprint owns licenses it could interfere with the actual license holders. T-Mobile HotSpot at home uses WiFi, which uses unlicensed spectrum so it really doesn't matter where you use one of their routers, however the downside being it's only compatible with certain phones.

Neutral

paul @ Aug 12th 2008 11:29AM

Good point.

You will find though that the ~1900 frequency is free for use in quite a few nations. Or at least for local DECT use. Which is pretty much localized calling..

Neutral

Paul @ Aug 12th 2008 3:48PM

Rather than charging people the $4.99 per month, I wonder if sprint has thought about offering access to other Sprint users who are not registered.

Currently you have to pay per month and only 50 or so authorized users can access it. So why not say we will waive the $4.99 if you agree to allow any sprint user in the immediate area to access this micro cell.

Highest Ranked

MadMike @ Aug 12th 2008 10:24AM

That's neat. Why can't AT&T have this? My office is like a bomb shelter, so I get ZERO service. But everything I see requires some hard-core wiring and installation. Just as long as it can get past a web-proxy.

Neutral

Squid7085 @ Aug 13th 2008 12:00AM

Consider me another person that would like to see AT&T have something like this. Although, I would perfer not having to do this and to have service in my Suburban home. Oh well, apparently that is too much to ask.

As a side note, you can bet every Sprint Store will have one of these. "Yes, as you can see, Sprint has excellent service, why it appears we have 5 Bars in this Shopping Mall! Does your old provider have 5 Bars in here?" (50 Feet away and 5 minutes later) "WTF? Call Failed?"

Neutral

barry @ Sep 13th 2008 12:24PM

most of the retail and repair centers have a commercial version of this device, this is why "everything works" when brought into their stores

Neutral

TheGasMan @ Aug 12th 2008 10:44AM

"There's definitely a port for hooking up a GPS antenna to keep users from taking this abroad"
There's a port for hooking up a GPS antenna... So... it doesn't have a GPS antenna with it?

And... if it did ship with one when it comes officially to end users, what would prevent them from removing the antenna and using it internationally?

And how do you know that's what the GPS port is for in the first place?

Highly Ranked

zephxiii @ Aug 12th 2008 11:07AM

The port is more than likely an external hook up to an antenna, when the device itself cannot acquire GPS lock. The device probably will not work until it can verify that it is in an area it is licensed to operate in.

Neutral

TheGasMan @ Aug 12th 2008 11:21AM

Yeah I know it's an external port, that part was self-explanatory. But if that's the case -- that it won't work if it can't get a GPS lock -- you're not going to be able to use this thing inside very many buildings.

None of this sounds reasonable to me; I just can't buy Engadget's explanation. I'd like to see some official confirmation of this claim.

Neutral

zephxiii @ Aug 12th 2008 11:29AM

The thing is that is HAS TO KNOW where it is, even in the states, as Sprint operates on different frequencies per market. There is no doubt about this. Also, it is a large device, they could have builtin a very large and sensitive GPS antenna to help compensate for it being indoors.

Neutral

IGotTheMondays @ Aug 12th 2008 11:29AM

I can check it out next week when I get one. My bedroom at home is a Sprint deadzone so I'll be picking one of these up right away.

Neutral

SOOPERGOOMAN @ Aug 12th 2008 11:38AM

GPS stands for Gathering People Secrets. That's what they want. They secretly want to track you and beat you into submission with their extra gps port. Muhahahaha... Actually I have no idea of what this thing does or care for that matter. Enlighten me someone please.

Neutral

Tom @ Aug 12th 2008 1:27PM

Also, notice that the 'requirements' on the box stipulate positioning the unit near a window to get a GPS lock. This may be a problem for larger houses, since they cannot centrally locate the femtocell. Sprint's website says "It's like having your own miniature cell tower with a coverage radius of up to 5,000 square feet," (note: square feet is a coverage area, not radius) which if you apply your basic geometry, gets you a real radius of less than 40 feet. That means if your house stretches more than 40 feet across, you will lose the effectiveness of the femto (this problem gets worse in corners and on different levels of the house when you get outside the coverage 'sphere'). So the true range of a femto is really limited by the GPS requirement since you will need to locate the femto near a window. (Although, you'll get service in your front lawn!)

Neutral

Squid7085 @ Aug 13th 2008 12:03AM

How long before a hacked "Antenna" that "tells" the device that you are in the United States? I mean, I guess there could be encryption and stuff, but it doesn't seem out of the question.

Neutral

gr8whtd0pe @ Aug 12th 2008 11:38AM

uhh...

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/cellphone/9823/

theres you a att repeater, or sprint, or all in one.

Neutral

Judah @ Aug 12th 2008 12:08PM

umm, fella, thats a repeater. S/N's Airave is NOT a repeater. its basically a mini cell tower that uses your broadband setup to connect to S/N's network.

Neutral

gr8whtd0pe @ Aug 12th 2008 12:13PM

Ah, touche. MadMike was asking for an at&t version and this is the only thing I know of that would do it.

Neutral

Kris @ Aug 12th 2008 11:40AM

I would pick one up if it didn't cost extra per month. You're using your own, home connection so paying more money a month to use something on it sounds ludicrous to me.

Neutral

judah @ Aug 12th 2008 12:09PM

$5 a month really isnt that bad.

Neutral

JoeyStyles @ Aug 12th 2008 12:40PM

I agree 100%, With T-Mobile and the UMA service you don't have to pay extra and it does improve service but paying extra per month for improving the quailty of service, thats why you pay random surcharges on your bill so they can improve service. This is sprint desperate way of saying we are broke and we sold our towers so we need to make as much as we can before we crash or dump IDEN which ever is first.

Neutral

Eric @ Aug 12th 2008 12:20PM

I live in Denver where they have been testing these for about a year. If you want one you just ask and they give it to you for free. There is of course an additional fee for usage.

The booster works great and I really enjoy it EXCEPT when you are torrenting. If you use up all your bandwidth, the signal will still go through the box and it will sound really bad. Usually I just make sure to torrent at night when I am not making calls.

Neutral

Chris @ Aug 12th 2008 1:05PM

Eric, I have been using in Denver also for the past year almost. I love it but trying to figure out a way to filter the packets but have not had any luck. I figured out the issue with torrenting and sometime have issues if I am streaming music on my network with call quality. Try to make anything from the Airwave number #1 when I am using it.

Highly Ranked

Jorge @ Aug 12th 2008 1:10PM

Or make sure you either limit your torrent upload speed so that you give the Airave enough breathing room for it's traffic. Who knows how much bandwidth the Airave needs to work properly.

You can also implement some basic QoS if you have a DDWRT compatible router and make sure that the Airave gets priority over everything else.

Neutral

zephxiii @ Aug 12th 2008 1:15PM

hehe, yea that is the problem with phone calls over the internet. If you use up all the upload bandwidth, the phone service goes to shit...unless there is an awesome QoS setup going on. Eric, limit the maximum upload speed in bit torrent to 15kB/s less (or more) than your internet's maximum upload speed.

Neutral

Dave @ Aug 12th 2008 12:56PM

Sprint already sent me one because my service inside and outside of my home is really bad and their coverage maps have me surrounded with their service for many, many, many miles in every direction. Kudos to Sprint since they waived the cost of the unit and the $5 monthly fee for me. I've been using it for two weekes and initially I found that when setting it up you might need to give it an hour our two to actually get up and running correctly after plugging it in. It also did not play nice with one of the Linksys switches I had in my home network so I just shuffled around my connections and bypassed the problematic switch. Additionally I found that the distance this device reaches is very limited. I believe they say it will cover up to 5,000 sq ft which is an interesting way to represent that it will reach up to 39.9 ft. Do the math...the area of a circle is (pie)r(squared). 3.14 * 39.9 * 39.9 = 4,998.9. Finally, I think it is a joke that Sprint has it setup so this unit will allow transfers to an actual Sprint tower from the device but not vice versa. Do they think that they'll actually make money still charging people on a call after they return home? Hello McFly, my calls will end up dropping anyways. Outside of all those issues I will say that when you're actually within range this device actually works just like it's suppose to. On a final note, while it will also work with your text messaging since they transmit over the voice network don't expect this thing to serve up EVDO.

Neutral

Jeffnla @ Aug 12th 2008 1:49PM

Thanks for the mini-review Dave. I have the same problem at home, I am looking forward to this device. Personally, I don't care about evdo at home, if I am home... I am within range of my 15/2 connection anyway.

Neutral

Peter @ Aug 12th 2008 3:29PM

So essentially what this box does is allowing Sprint to charge you for using your own electricity and broadband connection. Sounds great.
I'm sure if you pony up $5 they'll even let you have a beer from your own fridge.
LOL

Highly Ranked

Josh @ Aug 12th 2008 3:46PM

I love my T Mo @ Home service.

Neutral

81dollar @ Aug 12th 2008 4:04PM

So maybe this is an ignorant question, but what prevents your Sprint carrying neighbors from leaching off your airave (and subsequently, your internet)? Is there a way to lock the airave to only allow an authorized handset(s)?

Neutral

Dave @ Aug 12th 2008 5:13PM

The unit comes unlocked meaning that anyone that has Sprint service could actually make a call through it provided they're within range. My experience with it would have them already positioned within your home before they're within range. You do however actually have a way to secure the unit through a call in to Sprint. They have the ability to lock your unit except for up to 50 (not 30 as originally reported) registered Sprint numbers that you provide to them. Eventually they plan to have the number registration available online for users to access through their account access. Once your number is registered you actually have to place a call to *99 while within range of the unit for initial setup of that particular phone. *99 is also the sequence you dial to verify you're within range of the unit.

Neutral

James Herdt @ Aug 29th 2008 4:42PM

You have the option to restrict users in your account management area of the Sprint Web-site.

Neutral

tony @ Aug 12th 2008 4:52PM

I believe if you look at picture 12, the antenna is the item is the upper, right reddish bag; the power cord is in the bag below it. Perhaps Dave can shed light on the external antenna setup.

Neutral

Dave @ Aug 12th 2008 5:13PM

That's right, the external GPS Antenna is in the red bag. The GPS antenna cord I believe is 20 feet long.

Neutral

Dave @ Aug 12th 2008 5:18PM

I'm jealous as I've only got 15/1 Mbps at home. That extra 1 on the upload would be great for running my Slingbox and Orb. I would like to still see the Airave support higher data speeds in the future however for devices like my HTC Touch that supports EVDO but does not have built in WI-FI.

Neutral

AdamP @ Aug 12th 2008 5:20PM

How sure are you that the GPS is for location information? GPS is a common way to get really accurate time information, which you need to run a cell.

Neutral

AdamP @ Aug 12th 2008 5:21PM

How sure are you that the GPS is for location information? GPS is a common way to get really accurate time information, which you need

Highly Ranked

eltee @ Aug 12th 2008 6:04PM

Ok few things.

I've been using one of these up in the mountains outside of Denver and it works great for sending/receiving calls. Also as to bandwidth usage theres some good/bad here... the good is that it limits itself to 128k both down and up... this lets it multiplex up to three concurrent calls (good) but also limits it to allowing only the older style sprint data speed (no evdo for phones/devices through this at home, sorry)

As to the GPS, the unit absolutely *will not* work without a live gps link, but believe it or not that's less sinister than people think... In order to be a licensed tower (and it actually will be a fcc licensed cell tower, in your house) it has to be able to provide gps for e911 situations. Additionally, and actually more importantly, in order to be interoperable with and *not* interfere with the actual sprint network, it has to absolutely have ridiculously accurate timing information (down to nanoseconds or even possibly below, far far beyond what internet time etc could provide). GPS is used to provide that level of accurate timing to the unit.

Overall, I've been extremely happy with the unit thus far.

One little oddity is that it is not (at least in the denver beta market) billed to your current phone number as an option (like say, text message plans would be), but rather added like a 'new device' and has its own number/billing information

Summary:

If you have had a sprint phone with signal issues, this box absolutely will resolve them, you will be 3-5 bars everywhere in your house (and likely your yard too).

Also bear in mind it needs a fairly solid net connection, low latency, low packetloss, and as previously mentioned, no one torrenting or otherwise slamming a poor $50 home router like it was some cisco powerhouse.

Neutral

mathwhiz @ Aug 12th 2008 7:54PM

I wish there were something like this for Verizon...

Neutral

DavidB @ Aug 13th 2008 12:11PM

I like the concept of a femtocell and have anticipated their US availability. What I do NOT like though is Sprint wanting to CHARGE ME for improving THEIR coverage! My take on the whole femtocell issue is that the carrier's should be subsidizing these and actually offering ME a sliding scale discount (minutes don't count against MY monthly limit as long as I'm on MY femto). How to deal with that if some OTHER Sprint user is hitting my femto I don't know though.

Another thing to consider: This is a CDMA femtocell. So in THEORY at least, with Sprint having CDMA agreements with other CDMA carriers (i.e. Verizon, Alltel, etc.), would those carrier customers also be able to get on my femto?

Oh, and someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but this thing ONLY deals with voice/SMS coverage (via CDMA), it doesn't deal with EV-DO data at all as I understand the technology.

Neutral

bobhadorn @ Aug 22nd 2008 5:50PM

Another sad story in the Sprint story. I have had horible coverage since buying the Touch....I refer to it as a Microsoft device, not a phone. Reboot often and terrible reception. I waited months for this thing and now it does not work. Ticket time for resolution....51 hours...Im done...Will join the millions of Sprint has beens as soon as I can.

Neutral

barry @ Sep 13th 2008 12:24PM

contact them via email, they get more done
you may also wish to try to update your phone software or use a cooked rom on xda-devs