T-Mobile US and equipment vendor Inseego joined forces on a fixed wireless access (FWA) router designed to support standalone (SA) 5G network slicing and 5G-Advanced, providing business customers with faster speeds and improved Wi-Fi coverage.
The Inseego Wavemaker 5G cellular router FX4100 and Inseego Wavemaker mesh Wi-Fi X700 are designed exclusively for T-Mobile for Business customers. Ryan Sullivan, SVP of carrier product management for Inseego, told Mobile World Live (MWL) his company spent the last year developing the third-generation indoor FWA router for T-Mobile.
Steve Harmon, CCO at Inseego, added T-Mobile for Business has exclusive rights to the router through the end of the current year.
T-Mobile announced its 5G-Advanced network was deployed nationwide during its Q1 earnings call last month. The FX4100 router is Inseego’s first 5G-Advanced device.
The operator is offering network slices on its T-Priority service for first responders, but it did not say if it is using Inseego’s router.
Inseego claims the router provides improved 5G speeds on the downlink using three-carrier aggregation and two-carrier aggregation for the uplink.
Sullivan stated the uplink features not only improve performance but also increase capacity at the cell site level. In addition, they extend the reach of a cell site “because you’re able to aggregate a low channel or a low-band uplink carrier with a mid-band or a high-band uplink carrier”, he said, to provide better performance across a broader area of coverage.
The vendor stated the carrier aggregation makes video calls run smoother. It also eliminates the need for bonding two routers together, which makes it more affordable for customers and more efficient on a network.
“It also comes with Wi-Fi mesh nodes,” Harmon said. “You have the router itself, and then you can attach up to three mesh nodes to that device to take that Wi-Fi 7 capability and expand it across a large footprint.”
Customers can control the mesh nodes using the vendor’s Inseego Connect mobile device management platform and the Inseego Mobile App to govern devices remotely.
Harmon explained the router also has an on-screen display window that allows customers to run speed tests, see alerts or gather information on how to install the device correctly.
“If they did end up on a phone call with a customer care team at T-Mobile, that representative is able to toggle this screen and capture some information to help them deploy it correctly,” he said.
The router also comes equipped with 5G uplink MIMO technology to support both Time Division Duplex (TDD) and Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) bands, which Inseego stated improves data transmission and spectrum efficiency.
The Inseego Wavemaker FX4100 is powered by Qualcomm Dragonwing FWA Gen 3 Platform. In addition to SA 5G, it supports NSA modes as well as 4G LTE Cat 20 for connectivity across a range of bands.