Sprint takes Airave femtocell service nationwide

9:00pm ET July 29, 2008 - It turns out Airave is not yet available nationwide. Sprint contacted BetaNews Tuesday evening to clarify that its writing, "You will be able to use your Airave at this location" actually means customers can use it at some undetermined time in the future, but not now. Sprint says it has not announced a launch date for the Airave service.

While Sprint has been testing Airave in select markets for months, the company has now begun to sell the service nationwide.

It appears to be a competitor to T-Mobile's HotSpot@Home, a service which also enhances a subscriber's indoor coverage by using broadband to connect the cellular network. The equipment costs $99.99 and has a coverage radius of about 5,000 square feet.

Unlike T-Mobile HotSpot@Home, Airave does not offer UMA (unlicensed mobile access), but instead uses femtocell technology, which behaves like miniature cell tower, meaning any device can work with it, not only dual-mode UMA phones.

AT&T is also looking at femtocells, and said it plans to launch its own trial later in the year according to reports.

To use it with a Sprint plan, the customer must add the "enhanced coverage charge," which adds $4.99/month to the bill, and either a Single line unlimited calling plan at $10 per month or the multi-line option which is $20 per month, per account.

With this extra calling plan, while using the femtocell, calls received and made do not deduct minutes from a users account. Users can also restrict access to the base station by providing a list of up to 50 approved Sprint numbers which can use it to place calls.

Made by Samsung, the Airave is able to support up to three simultaneous users, although Nextel phones are incompatible with the service. A Sprint signal at the user's location is not required, although it will be if the user wishes to have their calls automatically transferred to the tower network once they are out of range of the base station.