Newsletter
Sprint’s Magic Box small cell deployment sees big success according to the carrier. Sprint, which announced and rolled out the new wireless small cell last May, has now reported that a large amount of the small cell network enhancement devices have been deployed in tons of cities across the country. A total of 80,000 Magic Boxes have been sold to both businesses and consumers in 200 different cities. With these numbers Sprint says this makes the Magic Box “one of the largest” deployments for small cell boxes in the U.S., and it’s planning to continue deploying more of the boxes in the near future.
Sprint doesn’t give an exact time frame but it does mention that it “soon” plans to reach over 100,000 Magic Boxes deployed to its business and consumer customers. What’s more is that it expects to deploy millions of the little boxes over the coming years. Millions might seem like a lot but Sprint reportedly had a very high demand for the technology even back when it launched last year, and Sprint notes that demand is still very high, with the only difference being that it’s now able to meet that customer demand thanks to the company that makes the boxes – Airspan Networks, having ramped up production of the Magic Box specifically because Sprint didn’t anticipate how much its customers would want it in the beginning.
The popularity of the Magic Box is no doubt due to its ease of use and the simple setup. The unit is wireless and doesn’t need to be plugged into a wireless router or modem, though it does still need to be plugged into a wall outlet for power and placed near a window in the offices or homes where it’s being set up. Sprint says nearly one third of the Magic Box customers are businesses, which means more than half of the current customers for this small cell technology are consumers who already use Sprint for their own personal wireless service and sought to have improved coverage in the home or elsewhere. Sprint’s Magic Box small cell development is part of the carrier’s continued efforts to improve service for its customers in addition to the future investments it plans to make in its network technologies for this year and onward.