Vodafone to launch HSDPA on 20 October

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 04 October 2006 08:08

Your IT - Home IT

Vodafone has announced plans to offer an HSDPA service to its 3G customers in Sydney and Melbourne from 20 October.

• Announcements

The service, to be marketed as ‘mobile broadband’ will offer a maximum download speed of 1.8 Mbps, around four times faster than the current 3G data service. Vodafone says it will also have increased reliability and lower latency.

Customers will need to purchase a Vodafone Mobile Connect (VMC) with HSDPA/3G data card (PCMCIA format), recommended retail price of $299. It will be available on a 24 month plan for $0 upfront, then $12.46 per month.

The service will also be accessible from the Lenovo ThinkPad R60, T60, X60 and Z61 notebooks which ship with inbuilt HSDPA modems. Also, Vodafone will release a HSDPA/3G USB modem in November, 2006, and it expects HSDPA mobile handsets to be available for retail sale in the first half of 2007.

The service will also be available by plugging the PCMCIA card into the Linksys Wireless-G Router (WRT54G3G), launched in March this year.  It enables users on up to five laptops with 802.11g wireless capabilities to simultaneously share a 3G wide area network connection with a single Vodafone Mobile Connect 3G data card.