Sprint Airave

[Virtualbot]

Now the main question... has Samanthabrynn checked her address? If not, better do it now, otherwise, this might be a huge waste of time at this point.

[lordsutch]

Well, unless she lives nowhere near Charleston (i.e. in that small blue patch in the southwestern corner of the state, or up near Wheeling or Harper's Ferry), she's in the "no Airave for you" zone. Apparently Sprint sent her an Airave by mistake, without realizing it wouldn't work, like happened with jbnello's sister.

[WiWavelength]

Yep, my bet is a non compete clause in the agreement with nTelos.

 

AJ

[S4GRU]

Yep, my bet is a non compete clause in the agreement with nTelos.

 

AJ

 

I bet this right. However, it's counterintuitive. nTelos should want as many Sprint customers in the area as possible running up billable costs on their network. If customers like Samantha leave Sprint because of poor home performance, it is less money for nTelos over all most likely. Sprint and nTelos should work out the ability for Airaves to run in their area.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

[swintec]

i remember when the airaves first came out quite a few years ago they were not supposed to be used in certain areas of the country. i know it was locations out west but i cant remember for the life of me what the company was called that operated in the area but they were like a sprint authorized affiliate or something.

[WiWavelength]

I bet this right. However, it's counterintuitive. nTelos should want as many Sprint customers in the area as possible running up billable costs on their network.

 

I would say that the non compete clause serves both parties. Sprint does not want to acquire a sub who is going to rack up significant roaming/affiliate charges, and nTelos does not want to lose a potential sub to Sprint.

 

AJ

[digiblur]

For my amusement, I typed in an address in downtown Charleston WV (specifically, 501 Virginia Street East, Charleston, WV 25301, which is the location of some Charleston city offices) into the Airave eligibility tool:

 

http://www.sprint.co...:airavecoverage

 

It comes back "not eligible." If I had to guess, Charleston is part of the nTelos wholesale market, and I'll bet you dollars to donuts your Airave won't work there because Sprint has subleased its spectrum to nTelos there. I don't think nTelos will lease femtocells to Sprint customers (heck, I doubt they offer them to nTelos customers either).

 

On the other hand, I typed in the address for the city hall of Fulton, Mississippi (213 W Wiygul St Fulton, MS 38843)... and found something really interesting. The blue areas are where you can get an Airave.

 

http://coverage.spri...ntery=34.271589

 

By sheer coincidence (literally it's the first address I tried other than one in Charleston), on the right you can see where the 35km boundary cuts off here. If you play with the scale parameter in the URL you can actually zoom out, and find out exactly who Sprint won't give an Airave - sucks to live in Red Bay, Alabama if you're a Sprint fanboi.

 

http://coverage.spri...ntery=34.271589

 

Something for everyone to play with this weekend.

 

EDIT: Here's your problem... http://coverage.spri...7&mapcentery=38

 

All in... https://coverage.sprint.com/action/WebImageStream9?covType=sprint&serviceType=airaveConsumer&scale=3500&mapcenterx=-88.403603&mapcentery=34.271589&width=1024&height=768

[S4GRU]

 

I would say that the non compete clause serves both parties. Sprint does not want to acquire a sub who is going to rack up significant roaming/affiliate charges, and nTelos does not want to lose a potential sub to Sprint.

 

AJ

 

But doesn't Sprint actively sell service and have stores in nTelos areas? Every customer of theirs in these areas would be racking up nTelos billables. Additionally, I would think nTelos has to realize the capture rate of Sprint customers joining nTelos would be less than one third. Most of these customers would likely go to someone else. A Sprint customer is guaranteed revenue.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

[Virtualbot]

All in... https://coverage.spr...1024&height=768

 

That's a great map. Any way of getting the west coast area?

 

Edit: Nevermind. Changed the 'scale' in the URL area to 5000 and it now shows all of the US.

[digiblur]

That's a great map. Any way of getting the west coast area?

 

Edit: Nevermind. Changed the 'scale' in the URL area to 5000 and it now shows all of the US.

 

Or change the X and Y

[lordsutch]

But doesn't Sprint actively sell service and have stores in nTelos areas? Every customer of theirs in these areas would be racking up nTelos billables. Additionally, I would think nTelos has to realize the capture rate of Sprint customers joining nTelos would be less than one third. Most of these customers would likely go to someone else. A Sprint customer is guaranteed revenue.

 

You could buy a Sprint phone at Best Buy or RadioShack in Christiansburg or Roanoke. There were some Sprint dealers around, and there might be a corporate store in Roanoke (from signage it looked like a corporate store, but so do the stores in affiliate markets that are run by the affiliates themselves).

 

My assumption, the more I think about it, is that the barrier to Airaves in affiliate and wholesale areas is more technical than legal, and probably more on Sprint's side than the affiliate/wholesale side. The Airave probably needs special programming to talk to non-Sprint RF switches and base stations, and I'd guess the cost/benefit for Sprint to do the extra work, and to get the affiliates/wholesalers to allow Sprint equipment to access their hardware, is considered too low, even if they've ever really thought about doing it in the first place.

 

Sprint probably figures most anyone who needs an Airave in affiliate/wholesale markets can pick up a retail signal booster, and since any RF interference from a consumer booster isn't going to mess up Sprint's network in the area (since there IS no Sprint network in the area), that's fine enough with them.

[Samanthabrynn]

And now...we have an answer. I think you guys hit it.

[radji]

 

Howdy ma'am. You got the same Airrave as me. I had the same problem as you when I got my Airrave back in December. You need to call Sprint and tell them your Airrave came programmed incorrectly. I had to call and they did some stuff over the phone before they had me take the Airrave to the Sprint store near my house. They did some more stuff to it and finally figured out it wasn't programmed properly. This is the number I called: 1-866-556-7310.

[Virtualbot]

 

Howdy ma'am. You got the same Airrave as me. I had the same problem as you when I got my Airrave back in December. You need to call Sprint and tell them your Airrave came programmed incorrectly. I had to call and they did some stuff over the phone before they had me take the Airrave to the Sprint store near my house. They did some more stuff to it and finally figured out it wasn't programmed properly. This is the number I called: 1-866-556-7310.

 

I thought it was determined that her area might not be even covered at all... Pretty much all of West Virginia is not covered at all.

 

Sent from my Rooted Galaxy Note II using Tapatalk 2.

[radji]

You know you're absolutely right. I didn't read that far ahead. +1 to you sir.

[Virtualbot]

You know you're absolutely right. I didn't read that far ahead. +1 to you sir.

 

No problem. I have the same unit as well and can't use my phone for calls without it. I'm more surprised that the rep from Sprint didn't verify the area before sending the Airave. Would have saved lots of time and frustration from the OP.

 

Sent from my Rooted Sony Tablet S using Tapatalk HD

[nate.smith]

Not sure if this is the best forum to post this question or not, but you all seem to know a thing or two about Airave's so I thought I'd try. I just purchased a used Airave off ebay and the seller states everything works great. After setting it up and going through initialization, the device fails to get a gps lock (blinking green). After trying everything in every troubleshooting guide (seriously), I took it to two other locations and the same thing happened...no gps lock. Called Sprint and they said that they recently and inadvertently sent out a faulty firmware update to some Airaves (and mine in particular) and that's what is causing my issue. They have no estimated date for a fix and simply told me to wait.

 

At first I accepted this answer and decided to patiently wait for their fix. But since then I've started to doubt their diagnosis...partly because I don't read of anyone else having this issue and partly because it seems like they should be able to revert back to a prior firmware version pretty quickly if that was causing the issue. So, I thought I'd shoot it out on this thread to see if this made sense to you all and if you have other advice for me.

[digiblur]

Did you get the unit activated on your account?

 

Sent from my little Note2

 

 

[nate.smith]

Yes, it is activated (according to Sprint).

[jonathanm1978]

I have a question...since an airave is tied somehow with towers, is there a reason why my airave would be working properly, with beeps before calls, but only giving me 1x data? I have the newest 2.5 version, just noticed on both mine and wife's S3 that we are only 1X data. Should be 3G.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

[digiblur]

I have a question...since an airave is tied somehow with towers, is there a reason why my airave would be working properly, with beeps before calls, but only giving me 1x data? I have the newest 2.5 version, just noticed on both mine and wife's S3 that we are only 1X data. Should be 3G.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

Airaves aren't tied to the towers at all.  Or even satellites as some CSRs will tell you. 

[jonathanm1978]

Maybe the radio has burned up inside of it or something...dunno. Normally on wifi anyway so I almost missed out on catching it.

[digiblur]

Maybe the radio has burned up inside of it or something...dunno. Normally on wifi anyway so I almost missed out on catching it.

 

Reboot it.

[jonathanm1978]

Reboot it.

 

Did a hard reset with a needle...all lights came back, beeps before calls again...still no 3G. Aside from calling tech, only other thing I know is to hook it up to my PC and visit 192.168.17.1, but not much you can do inside it's setup.

[WiWavelength]

I have a question...since an airave is tied somehow with towers, is there a reason why my airave would be working properly, with beeps before calls, but only giving me 1x data? I have the newest 2.5 version, just noticed on both mine and wife's S3 that we are only 1X data. Should be 3G.

 

Well, as I am known for pointing out, it is still 3G.  Like EV-DO, CDMA1X is also 3G.  And we need to get people to stop referring to "3G," generically.

 

As for why EV-DO has disappeared, I doubt this is the reason, but I would not be surprised to see it in the future.  For one CDMA1X carrier channel, an Airave requires 2.5 MHz of available spectrum.  For one EV-DO carrier channel, it requires another 2.5 MHz of available spectrum.  That available spectrum comes from unused carrier channel assignments or active carrier channel assignments -- the latter only if path loss is great enough that the Airave will not interfere with service from any local sites.

 

Here is the problem, as part of Network Vision, Sprint is upping the carrier channel count on many sites.  And in the coming year, Sprint plans to deploy a second LTE 1900 carrier on many sites.  That takes unused carrier channel assignments and puts them into service.  Thus, fallow spectrum for Airave use is apt to start diminishing.  And it could make sense for Sprint to disable Airave EV-DO (where necessary) to cut down the amount of spectrum that an Airave is occupying to only one carrier channel.  By now, anyone who has an Airave and needs wireless data at that location should be on Wi-Fi anyway.

 

AJ