I have the Airave. It is great. I have also had Verizon and T Mobile service from this house. All three (four if you count Nextel's iDen network) have marginal network service at our house. Having one of the two carriers that offer an in-home coverage solution that is affordable is great.
I would, like everyone else that is posting on this topic, like to get this service for free. I would also like to get my cell service for free and lots of other things, but the price is reasonable, and no other carrier has offered a better overall solution for my situation.
By the way, here is my analysis of the difference in pricing between T-mobile and Sprint. Sprint chose a femto-cell CDMA solution to allow any CDMA phone to work. GPS is required as part of the CDMA network requirements and possibly to ensure compliance with spectrum licensing considerations. The femto cell device is produced in MUCH smaller quantities than WiFi routers with VoIP so the cost is probably 5 to 10 times ($50 vs $250-$300) as much to produce as those routers. Sprint purchases a lot of these, but waaaay less than what is needed to really bring the costs down. So they decide to subsidize them in a similar way to how they offer phones. This is why I think there is a $5 per month charge. The unlimited charge is probably just based on some competitive analysis of substitution of a wired phone line.
I'd always assumed (without anything to back it up whatsoever) that there was likely a per-transmitter fee they had to pay to the FCC, despite the fact the spectrum was already theirs. If not directly, then maybe an indirect cost w/r/t recordkeeping, etc for what is in many ways another tower. Whole different ball game than the T-Mo device which is just a tricked out router.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1, much like its Limited Edition sibling that we reviewed last month, is ever-so-slightly thinner than the iPad 2, a slate that most sane individuals (and competitors, for that matter) would confess is the market leader today.
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I have the Airave. It is great. I have also had Verizon and T Mobile service from this house. All three (four if you count Nextel's iDen network) have marginal network service at our house. Having one of the two carriers that offer an in-home coverage solution that is affordable is great.
I would, like everyone else that is posting on this topic, like to get this service for free. I would also like to get my cell service for free and lots of other things, but the price is reasonable, and no other carrier has offered a better overall solution for my situation.
By the way, here is my analysis of the difference in pricing between T-mobile and Sprint. Sprint chose a femto-cell CDMA solution to allow any CDMA phone to work. GPS is required as part of the CDMA network requirements and possibly to ensure compliance with spectrum licensing considerations. The femto cell device is produced in MUCH smaller quantities than WiFi routers with VoIP so the cost is probably 5 to 10 times ($50 vs $250-$300) as much to produce as those routers. Sprint purchases a lot of these, but waaaay less than what is needed to really bring the costs down. So they decide to subsidize them in a similar way to how they offer phones. This is why I think there is a $5 per month charge. The unlimited charge is probably just based on some competitive analysis of substitution of a wired phone line.
I'd always assumed (without anything to back it up whatsoever) that there was likely a per-transmitter fee they had to pay to the FCC, despite the fact the spectrum was already theirs. If not directly, then maybe an indirect cost w/r/t recordkeeping, etc for what is in many ways another tower. Whole different ball game than the T-Mo device which is just a tricked out router.