Sprint has announced that its Airave femtocells have been distributed to more than 250,000 customers across the nation. The company's vice president of network development and engineering, Iyad Tarazi, suggests the number is expected to climb to approximately 1 million over the next few years, according to comments made at the FierceWireless Path to 4G conference.
Sprint has now begun shipping the Airave Access Point femtocell. The new version carries EVDO and can handle 3G data for homes and phones without Wi-Fi. They continue to provide CDMA for phone calls.
After an FCC leak back in October, it is all but confirmed that Verizon will soon bring a femtocell to market with the Wireless Network Extender, according to an Engadget report. Like Sprint's similar AIRAVE, the Wireless Network Extender can support up to three simultaneous calls and leaves a channel open for emergency calls. The device hooks up to the Internet to let Verizon subscribers make VoIP calls from their cellular CDMA-compatible handsets from up to 5,000 feet away.
AT&T will be the next in the US to offer femtocells as its solution to customers who want indoor calling, says a report from financial analysts at ThinkPanmure. The US carrier is believed to have tapped Britain-based ip.access for a five-year contract purchase of the portable routers worth a total of $500 million. As with other femtocells, the AT&T models would fill in coverage in homes and other areas where cellular signals often encounter interference, creating a small wireless base station for a home that in turn connects to the larger cellular network.
