Airave: Sprint's twist on cellular voice over the Internet

There just might be gold in them there Voice over Internet Protocol hills. Sprint hopes so now that they've announced their Airave product: a device that expands your cell phone range at home and routes your voice traffic through your Internet connection. The Airave device will start at $49.95, although I'd eventually expect to see it handed out for free. The service will tack on $15 to your monthly cellular bill if you're on a lonely plan by yourself; families can expect to shell out $30 a month.

This approach by Sprint is different from the less-expensive UMA service offered by T-Mobile. Instead of embedding the WiFi & Internet routing into the handset, the Airave standalone device handles the voice traffic, making Sprint's service usable with many more handsets than the few that T-Mo offers. That part makes sense to me; it's the monthly fee that doesn't. You'll be paying more to free up bandwidth on Sprint's cellular network which allows them to have more paying customers using that network. In turn, your voice calls are handled on the Internet service that you're already paying for. Maybe they should be paying you. I know: wishful thinking... Sprint's full press release indicates that the initial service is for Denver and Indianapolis.

Comments

[Rick Lobrecht]

Sounds like a very cool concept. A lot of the younger people at my office only have a cell phone, so this could allow them to go down a level in the contract tiers. Adding a $15 price to it just jeeps Sprint's money about even.