Articles tagged with: mobile broadband

The future's bright - the future's more laptops with built-in HSDPA, so says Orange's director of devices (how much cooler would that title be with just two little letters missing), Francois Mahieu, who's promising more bundled laptop deals with SIMs inside.

According to Mahieu, "Almost one third of the laptops that we will sell to consumers next year will have a SIM embedded". Just the thing for dongle haters. And he's suggested a laptop care package might be on the way, a la Orange's current mobile handset offering. Joy.

Whatever you think about Dell, one thing’s for sure – it’s the first laptop manufacturer to realise that an ‘internet anywhere’ netbook isn’t much use without internet access. Wi-Fi is all well and good, but step out of network range with your little, low-cost laptop and it’s close to becoming dead weight.

So, while other manufacturers umm and ah about onboard mobile broadband support, the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 is the first netbook to actually have it, albeit as an option available only from Vodafone.

Share and share alike, we always say, and T-Mobile agrees. It's just busted out this Mobile Broadband Share Dock (catchy, eigh?) to turn your humble T-Mobile dongle into a mini, Wi-Fi equipped router.

In theory there's no limit to how many people can hop on your HSDPA hotspot for the frag fest to end all frag fests but bandwidth issues mean that T-Mobile suggests you limit your sharing to three users. But, hey, three's a crowd, right?

The dock costs £20 a month on an 18-month contract but that does include the dongle. If you've already got yourself a mobile broadband plan with T-Mobile then a quick call to customer services should get you a price to upgrade. Find it in T-Mobile stores and online in the next few days.

[T-Mobile via Pocket Lint]

We've heard of arriving fashionably late, but October 2008 for an HSDPA dongle? Still, better late than never, we say, as Virgin Media launches its first mobile broadband package.

For signing an 18-month contract and stumping up a modest £15 a month, Mr. Branson will furnish you with a 3GB data allowance. That doesn't make it the cheapest (stand up 3's £10 a month 1GB deal) but it does keep it up there with Joneses on price and data allowance.

Not the sort to have a dongle dangling from your netbook? Asus has your back. It's bringing out an Eee PC 901 with built-in HSDPA from next month.

The 7.2Mbps enabled lappie is only listed with Windows XP and also looks like it will only be available from mobile retailers and network providers as features such as Bluetooth and Wireless n are described as "operator dependent".

Otherwise it's the same 901 we know and love with an 8.9in, 1024x600 screen, Intel Atom processor, 1GB RAM and a six-cell battery. We'll keep an eye out for which networks snap this up.

[The Register]

Anything Carphone Warehouse can do - Orange can do too. It's joined with Asus to offer free Eee PC 900 16G laptops to anyone signing up to its 3GB mobile broadband service for £25/month.

The catch is you'll have to sign up for a full 24 months - total cost for your 'free' 16GB laptop: £600. Ouch!

If you don't want the freebie Eee, you can get the same 3GB tariff, sans laptop, for £10 a month a less - a saving of £240 over two years, or roughly the cost of an Eee PC 900 16G!

[Orange]

O2's come up with an attractive offer for mobile broadband users. It's giving customers who sign up to its £20 a month mobile broadband tariff free home broadband for a year.

For that you'll get 3GB of HSDPA data per month, unlimited access to O2's Wi-Fi hotspots (which includes BT's Openzone network) and O2's standard 8meg home broadband package. As a sweetener it's also throwing in a Wi-Fi router.

The offer's available from tomorrow till 31st October.

[O2]

The original Skypephone caused quite a stir when it launched on 3 last year with its free Skype to Skype calls and tiny £50 PAYG price.

Now 3 is back with a successor, the Skypephone S2. The newly printed spec list shows it has a 2.2in QVGA screen, 3.2MP camera, 50MB on-board memory expandable up to 4GB via microSD and will measure just 14mm thick.

The big draw, though, is that it will also get HSDPA and will come with modem drivers to use as a 3 mobile broadband dongle.

It'll be on sale from 18th August for the slightly higher price of £69.99 - or 'under £70' as 3 puts it.

[Pocket Lint]

HSDPA mobile broadband is all well and good but when it comes to sending files from phones and laptops in tends to be a tad sluggish. Now T-Mobile has turned on what it says is the first nationwide deployment of HSUPA - that's High-Speed Uplink Packet Access - to offer upload speeds of up to 1.4Mbps - or around five times current sluggish speeds.

That should make a huge difference to people who upload phone snaps or send large files on the move. The improvements also go hand in hand with upgrades to T-Mobile's download service, with HSDPA speeds set to be upped to 7.2Mbps in Greater London and then other major cities later this year.

T-Mobile UK chief executive, Jim Hyde, said: "25 per cent of new contract customers are signing up [to mobile broadband] and we expect to quadruple our user base in 2008." To help things along it's offering a £5 discount on its £15 a month tariff for the first three months for people signing up before October.

[Telecoms.com]

Echoing Carphone Warehouse's AOL offer, Phones4U has come up with a similar deal to flog Orange mobile broadband. Customers signing up to Orange's 3GB tariff for £30 a month can snare a 15.4in Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo (pictured) worth £349.99, complete with Intel Celeron 540 Processor, 80GB hard drive and 1GB RAM - together with the free HSDPA modem.

If that seems a bit weedy for your mobile tastes, there's also the option to upgrade to a 120GB Samsung R60 worth £499.99 for a modest £74.95.

[Pocket Lint]