FreedomFi, the open 5G company, recently announced the launch of FreedomFi One, the world's first consumer-deployable cellular base station giving customers with zero knowledge of LTE or 5G technologies the ability to bring up a cellular network -- simply plugging in FreedomFi One into a FreedomFi Gateway.
All configuration and setup is fully automated and happens behind the scenes. FreedomFi customers will be receiving shipments of FreedomFi One starting today.
FreedomFi One is an indoor cellular base station, also known as “small cell,” 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 220Mbps and support up to 96 simultaneous cellular device connections.
FreedomFi customers who purchase FreedomFi One small cell will also receive a FreedomFi sim card that can be inserted into any cellular device that supports CBRS band and can use it as their own private cellular network. Through its partnership with Helium blockchain, FreedomFi also aims to reward operators of its small cells with HNT cryptocurrency for offloading mobile data from the macro networks of operators.
Joey Padden, FreedomFi co-founder and CTO
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. 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.
Frank Mong, COO, Helium
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. 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.
