Airvana wins 3G femtocell agreement with Sprint

Airvana won a master purchase agreement contract with Sprint Nextel to supply the operator with 3G femtocells, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Airvana is [1]supplying Sprint with its 3G HubBub CDMA femtocells through December 2014.

Sprint currently offers CDMA femtocells from Samsung. The personal base stations are designed to boost voice coverage in homes. The new Airvana EVDO Rev. A femtocells are designed to boost data speeds in homes. Sprint hasn't announced a 3G femtocell offering yet.

For months, Airvana has been working to push the message that 3G operators can extend and improve 3G services through femtocells rather than relying on them to extend voice coverage in homes.  

In March, Airvana released the results of a performance test of the company's HubBub CDMA femtocell that revealed the product can significantly improve indoor 3G coverage and broadband performance when compared with an existing macro-cellular network alone.

Airvana said a side-by-side test showed a typical HubBub user can expect to achieve broadband data rates throughout the house of about five times that of the existing wireless macro network. From a theoretical EVDO peak data rate of 3.1Mbps, femtocell data rates also proved to be significantly more consistent than the macro rates, exceeding 2 Mbps in all corners of the home on a statistically reliable basis, the company said.

For more:
- take a look at Unstrung [1]

Related articles:
Airvana demos benefit of femtocells [2] for broadband boost
Femto Forum [3] launches apps initiative
LTE femtocells [4] may be more about coverage than speed