Sprint is now busy conducting trials on a program that has the major wireless carrier team up with engineering company MasTec in rolling out Magic Box small cell technology for a number of business clients. Justine Fauci, a Sprint Business representative, has indeed confirmed as much to FierceWireless, and she further explained that the mobile operator has always been open to the idea of experimenting with new ways in which to serve its customers, including exploring ideas both internally and in collaboration with vendor partners such as MasTec.
It appears that Sprint and MasTec are joining forces in order to deploy and install Magic Boxes and smartphone devices for the carrier’s business customers in select mobile markets across the United States, including major cities such as Los Angeles in California, Dallas in Texas, Miami in Florida, Cleveland in Ohio, Denver in Colorado, and even in the country’s capital, Washington, DC.
Sprint has made no secret about its aim of rolling out as many Magic Boxes as possible across the country. According to the number four largest mobile operator in America, it has already set up over a hundred thousand Magic Boxes for business customers and end users in approximately 200 metropolitan areas and urban centers in the United States. In the next few years, Sprint is looking to reach a total of over a million deployments.
It was nearly twelve months ago when Sprint first unveiled Magic Box, which is basically an LTE Advanced User Equipment (UE) Relay tool developed by AirSpan, a firm that offers small cell wireless tech solutions. A Magic Box unit is capable of delivering indoor coverage of up to 30,000 square feet on average. When deployed, the device serves as a mini base station that can generate an area of wireless connectivity, and it accomplishes this by connecting directly to the closest Sprint cell tower.
Sprint’s roll out of its Magix Boxes ties up nicely with its efforts to establish a solid foundation for the eventual launch of its 5G network offering. Right now, the national wireless service provider is providing 2.5 GigaHertz capabilities on about half of its existing cell towers. In a year or so, the company is looking to expand those capabilities to nearly all of its towers.
On top of this, Sprint is also planning to increase the number of its macro tower sites by about 20 percent. For good measure, the mobile operator is looking forward to roll out approximately 40,000 outdoor small cell solutions, 15,000 strand mounted small cells (with the help of its current collaborations with a number of cable service providers), and as many as a million Magic Box units.
