Sprint announces world's first all-wireless small cell – the Sprint Magic Box

• Small unit plugs into power, dramatically improves customer experience, all at no additional cost
• Low–cost solution enables Sprint to cost-effectively and rapidly densify its LTE Plus network

Sprint Magic Box, a new plug-and-play LTE small cell for businesses and consumers, dramatically improves indoor data coverage and speeds. (Photo: Business Wire)

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (BUSINESS WIRE), May 03, 2017: Sprint (NYSE:S) today unveiled the Sprint Magic Box, the world’s first all–wireless small cell. Sprint Magic Box is a revolutionary new plug–and–play LTE small cell for businesses and consumers that dramatically improves data coverage and increases download and upload speeds on average by 200 percent.¹ The breakthrough new technology allows Sprint to very quickly and cost–effectively densify its nationwide LTE Plus network, and provide an improved experience for its millions of customers today and in the future.

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The Sprint Magic Box is an indoor, self-configuring small cell, about the size of a shoebox, that’s easy for customers to install. It requires no implementation, labor, or rental costs that are a hurdle for many traditional small cell deployments. The unit is simply placed near a window and plugged into a power outlet. Sprint Magic Box connects to a nearby Sprint cell site and within minutes is up and running. Customers immediately have a better experience inside their businesses and homes while streaming videos, surfing the web, and using their favorite online apps and services. 

Sprint designed the Sprint Magic Box so that customers in surrounding areas will also enjoy the benefits of the locally installed unit. One Sprint Magic Box provides average coverage of 30,000 square feet indoors and can benefit adjacent Sprint customers inside the building. The signal can also extend coverage 100 meters outside a building, benefitting Sprint customers in nearby buildings and improving street–level network performance.

Sprint Magic Box is free to use for qualifying businesses and consumers.²

Accelerating Sprint’s Network Densification Strategy

Sprint Magic Box greatly accelerates Sprint’s strategy to densify its network as it improves performance and builds a strong foundation for 5G. It uses Sprint’s ample, dedicated 2.5 GHz spectrum with backhaul provided by Sprint’s outdoor macro cell sites. This removes the cost of backhaul, along with many of the challenges typically associated with small cell deployments, providing a low-cost, effective way to make the Sprint network – already performing at its best–ever–levels – even better for customers.

“Sprint Magic Box is going to quickly transform our network, and it is key to delivering an amazing experience to customers today as we build the kind of dense urban infrastructures needed for 5G,” said Dr. John Saw, Sprint CTO. “By leveraging our deep spectrum trove, Sprint has the ability to blanket its network with an all-wireless small cell that delivers this kind of dramatic performance boost with zero backhaul, permitting, and engineering costs.”

Sprint Magic Box deployment has begun in several cities across the country such as Denver, San Francisco, Indianapolis, New York, Chicago, and Houston. In the past three months downloads speeds across these markets have significantly improved as Sprint rolled-out its toolkit of densification technologies such as Sprint Magic Box, outdoor small cells, three-channel carrier aggregation, and launched iconic new High Performance User Equipment (HPUE) smartphones.

Unleashing Sprint’s Spectrum Advantage

The development of Sprint Magic Box is part of Sprint’s ongoing program to improve its network through its Densification and Optimization strategy using some of the most advanced technologies in wireless. With 204 MHz of spectrum nationwide, and more than 160 MHz of 2.5 GHz spectrum in the top 100 U.S. markets, Sprint has more spectrum capacity than any other U.S. carrier, an advantage that Sprint Magic Box is designed to maximize.

Sprint Magic Box is one of many network innovations taking advantage of the company’s deep spectrum holdings. Sprint continues to improve coverage, reliability and speeds by adding more capacity where it’s needed with a toolbox of solutions including three-channel carrier aggregation and HPUE. In March in New Orleans, Sprint was the first carrier to debut Sprint Gigabit Class LTE on a live commercial network in the U.S.

Looking ahead, Sprint will continue its deployment of three-channel carrier aggregation on 2.5 GHz sites. The company also anticipates leveraging a multitude of advanced technologies including four-channel carrier aggregation, 256 QAM, 4x4 MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) and Massive MIMO to further enhance the capacity and coverage of its 2.5 GHz TDD-LTE spectrum.

Business and consumer customers interested in the Sprint Magic Box can learn more about product availability and see if they qualify for the product at www.sprint.com/getmagicbox.