Dell cocks snoot at wi-fi, cuddles up to Vodafone sim cards

Vodafone Ireland will launch new 1.2Mbs data card products for laptop users later this year. The technology, HSDPA (higher speed data packet access) is designed to give far faster internet access speeds than its current 3G datacards.
"By this time next year, we should have most of the country covered," said Chris Handley, head of product development in Vodafone Ireland.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that it is to dump its charge-by-data-downloaded pricing model on its current laptop data cards. The current data-download model is punitive on modern internet use with enhanced graphics and larger files being e-mailed. In addition to the new faster datacards, the company's HSDPA technology will also be incorporated into Dell laptops. In a struggling wi-fi market, Dell has been impressed by Vodafone Ireland's figures showing almost 7,000 of its post-pay 3G customers using a 3G handset as a means to connect their laptop. That is almost certainly more than the entire daily figure for wi-fi connections in Ireland. Add O2 and Meteor's figures plus specialised datacards and sim card internet access is beating wi-fi up.

Comments

[Dick OBrien]

Haven't seen this annoucement yet. What pricing structure are they moving to instead of per KB? And don't tell me they're just going to do it for the data cards. What about the rest of us poor chumps you just use our mobiles hooked up to our laptops.

[Ed Byrne]

Can't wait to see the pricing model - o2 have an 'all you can eat' data bundle for 35 euro a month with their Blackberry's - but as they disable the modem funcationality on them, you can't use your laptop with it. And Vodafone's current prices are totally unusable for even basic web browsing.

[Justin Mason]

Excellent! If they go for a sane, flat-rate pricing model, this will be a major improvement.

FWIW, I know several guys in the US who pay $60/month for unlimited data via EVDO. All it takes is 3 or 4 days spent on the road per month, and it works out as equal to or cheaper than hotel rates (and mobile, too). That's a major selling point...

also is that 1.2Mbps a "best case" figure? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSDPA notes that Cingular's US version achieves typical speeds of 400-700 kbit/s.

Still, that's a very nice data rate -- as long as latency is sub-100ms, that would be pretty suitable for most teleworkers I think.

[Bernie]

The best part about this announcement would be if Vodafone offered flat rates for data services when using their 3G SIM cards. I really want that kind of offer.

[Dave]

Do Vodafone not do flat rates already?

http://www.vodafone.ie/workonthemove/mcc/whatis/priceplan/data.jsp

I know the fees are ridiculous but maybe this is the 'flat-rate' they are talking about.