It's a great concept, but I agree that the $4.99 charge is ridiculous. Why should anyone pay twice (equipment+monthly) just to do Sprint the favor of offloading traffic from their backhaul network? What a joke!
I use T-Mobile's UMA, without paying extra for the unlimited feature (not needed). It does them a favor, and costs me $0 extra for equipment or service.
You aren't offloading data from their backhaul network; your calls are still going to get routed back into their system. That's not what this is about; this is about giving you coverage where you had none.
You ARE offloading traffic on the nearest portion of their backhaul ie the part that normally carries your call from the nearest cell tower to their main switch office. Typically that backhaul is handled by local landline data service networks, for example Qwest in our area. Sprint pays for every byte that Quest carries for them between sites and switch.
True, once it's to their switch, it's back in their system and in their backhaul, but this does save them money up to that point.
The concept is cool and I wouldn't even mind paying $4.99 a month plus the cost of the AIRAVE box. But the extra $20 per month to have unlimited mins for multiple phones? EPIC FAIL.
I wouldn't say it's a bad deal if your whole family had Sprint phones. You could completely cut out your home phone and just have everyone use their cell phones; I think that'd be quite convenient.
I know there are other voip-competitors, but we're presently paying around $33 (taxes included) through Vonage for unlimited calling, so $20 unlimited would offer $120 worth of yearly savings.
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It's a great concept, but I agree that the $4.99 charge is ridiculous. Why should anyone pay twice (equipment+monthly) just to do Sprint the favor of offloading traffic from their backhaul network? What a joke!
I use T-Mobile's UMA, without paying extra for the unlimited feature (not needed). It does them a favor, and costs me $0 extra for equipment or service.
You aren't offloading data from their backhaul network; your calls are still going to get routed back into their system. That's not what this is about; this is about giving you coverage where you had none.
You ARE offloading traffic on the nearest portion of their backhaul ie the part that normally carries your call from the nearest cell tower to their main switch office. Typically that backhaul is handled by local landline data service networks, for example Qwest in our area. Sprint pays for every byte that Quest carries for them between sites and switch.
True, once it's to their switch, it's back in their system and in their backhaul, but this does save them money up to that point.
The concept is cool and I wouldn't even mind paying $4.99 a month plus the cost of the AIRAVE box. But the extra $20 per month to have unlimited mins for multiple phones? EPIC FAIL.
@ChillyWilly
I wouldn't say it's a bad deal if your whole family had Sprint phones.
You could completely cut out your home phone and just have everyone use their cell phones; I think that'd be quite convenient.
I know there are other voip-competitors, but we're presently paying around $33 (taxes included) through Vonage for unlimited calling, so $20 unlimited would offer $120 worth of yearly savings.