
No bars at home? No problem. Airave acts like a mini cell tower, routing calls into Sprint’s network over your home’s high-speed Internet connection. Each Airave box handles up to three simultaneous calls, which can start at home and switch to a regular tower when you step outside, or vice versa. $100, plus from $5 per month; sprint.com
With all due respects, I disagree with this choice:
The current design of tying the device to a specific carrier is symptomatic of the US cell phone industry's malady of carrier orientation. A third party convenience device like this getting this affliction sinks the floor to a new depth. It would have been more useful if the hardware had been carrier neutral and managed the connection via software. Taking it further, a multi-layered architecture that will recognize (or at least capable of being trained) to handle multiple carrier heterogeneously would have been worthy of a place among the "best of what's new".
Ok, so it's tied to one carrier? How many cell carriers do YOU use at one time? I went from NO service when I moved to very solid service. Cannot even tell (aside from 2 beeps on connection) that I'm using a VOIP box for my cell! It's far advanced from t-mobiles wifi@home service, in that ANY sprint phone will work with it, not "special" wifi enabled phones. Data service also works across it. Additional plans enable the use of "unlimited" minutes when connected to the box, assuming that you don't already have the simply everything plan.
In a nutshell:
Great device, simple setup, has low speed requirements (40k each direction), supports multiple connections (3 concurrent), Wireless data works also. Is completely invisible to the end users phone!