FreedomFi announced a "consumer-deployable" indoor cellular base station that is priced at $1,500 and based on open-source Magma for the network core (access gateway and orchestrator components).
FreedomFi One is an indoor cellular base station operating in the CBRS spectrum band. It is capable of providing secure and interference free wireless coverage with the range of 2-3x of 5GHz Wi-Fi, downlink speeds of up to 220 Mbps and support up to 96 simultaneous cellular device connections. The company says all configuration and setup is fully automated and happens behind the scenes.
FreeFi is partnering with Sercomm - a leading manufacturer of cellular radio equipment - to build 50,000 FreedomFi One base stations.
“The rapid rollout of Helium 5G with ecosystem partners like FreedomFi is proof that an incentive model powered by blockchain is the future of deploying wireless infrastructure at scale,” said Frank Mong, COO, Helium. “We're excited to see consumer-owned 5G cities light up across the US, enabling high bandwidth devices to be supported on the Helium Network for the very first time.”
“An average cost to bring up a small cell site in the US today is $36,000, most of which is the cost of labor to complete the setup and configuration,” said Joey Padden, FreedomFi co-founder and CTO. “Through software automation and innovative open source technologies like Magma, we have cut that cost by two orders of magnitude. The 50,000 small cells we will deliver is more than Verizon currently has in the United States.”
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