Review: Samsung Airave

While the reviewer did not actually bash Sprint in his review, he did present some misinformation that could have been remedied by a little bit of homework. His ho-hum attitude towards his results could turn away people who would benefit greatly from this solution. I'm no fanboy, but to be fair, he should have clearly stated that data is not covered by the Airave at this time. Because it is unaffected, he should not have reported results for data since there is essentially zero change. Regarding the drop in signal upon leaving the house, it's understandably disappointing, but it's important to know why this is occurring. WiFi and Airave RF are two totally different signals. Why would you compare apples to oranges? the RF frequencies used ...
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Great post and I agree with you. The Airave was not designed with enough power to give great coverage once you go outside your residence or office. It's all based on what the FCC allows. In most cases you will get at least some useable signal within about a 50-100 foot radius outdoors but nobody should expect more than that. Mine works for about 75-100 feet outside in any direction before it attempts to make the hard handoff to the regular network.

One more important thing to remember;

According to Samsung, this device is capable of much further distances than 5000 sq. ft. but they had to restrict it due to FCC rules.

The reason you lose coverage when walking outside is the same reason you have a drop in coverage inside. The materials your house is made of (probably made before wireless signals were prevalent) just dampen the waves, and kill the signal. You could put the airave on the first floor, and you would get signal in the basement, and second floor. (How often do you go into your attic? either way, it would probably get signal anyway)

The misinformation about the products they test are starting to get a little bit too much.

Did they even mention the external GPS ant...
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But the Airave does have some problems that never seem to get mentioned. If you originate a call from outside the Airave range (ie down the street from your house on your way home) and then enter your house and get close to the Airave the regular network cannot make the handoff to the Airave (because it's not it's list of eligible hand offs) and as a result the call will get choppy and/or end up dropping every time. There's actually no way for Sprint to solve this problem either because it's the way CDMA technology was designed to work.

I doubt its the way CDMA was developed. If that is the case, we shouldnt be able to hand off to any other site. The reason lies in the way the Cell Site is datafilled. Within the datafill is a parameter called the neighborlist - this identifies other sites in the area that are safe/preferrable to hand off to. What site you will goto is determined by what sector you are at and what direction you are heading. Unfortuantely, this neighborlist identifies sites by their SITE ID #. The air-rave does NOT have a macro network identifiable Site ID #.

psiefer said:
While the reviewer did not actually bash Sprint in his review, he did present some misinformation that could have been remedied by a little bit of homework.

I disagree. The issues you describe below are not "misinformation" at all.

His ho-hum attitude towards his results could turn away people who would benefit greatly from this solution. I'm no fanboy, but to be fair, he should have clearly stated that data is not covered by the Airave at this time. Because it is unaffected, he should not have reported results for data since there is essentially zero change.

I disagree. In fact, I think if we did what you suggest, that would be biased.

The main competition for...
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Rich is 100% right, don't correct him or he will make you look silly.

Rich/Eric for pres!!