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Vodafone debuts 3G Laptop Card

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

Trevor Datson



LONDON: British-based Vodafone Group Plc, the mobile phone giant weighing a $30 billion-plus bid for U.S. rival AT&T Wireless, said that it was launching Europe's maiden, third-generation laptop data card.



The card, whose data transmission speeds rival those of broadband Internet connections, will be rolled out in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK over the next four weeks.



Aimed squarely at the business user, the card, which is slightly larger than a standard credit card, can be inserted into compatible laptops and is many times faster than the GPRS cards now in widespread use.



"What it gives you is that it enables you to work 10 times faster than you're able to do at the moment," Vodafone spokesman Jon Earl said.



The card, which is expected to cost around 359 euros ($460) in Germany on subsidized contracts and 1,000 euros unsubsidized, should enable business users to log in seamlessly to corporate networks.



Vodafone, whose third-generation (3G) network covers about 30 percent of the population in its launch markets, is for the time being alone in offering such a laptop card in Europe.



Earl declined to give any sales projections for the card or target revenues, but said it would be a "significant contributor" to revenues. "It's certainly a product that's going to be out there," he said.



DROPPED CALLS



Technical glitches and market skepticism about consumer demand for high-speed multimedia phones prompted the mobile phone establishment to delay 3G launches for years after operators spent 100 billion euros on acquiring 3G licenses.



Only Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa's "3" brand and Telekom Austria have sold 3G videophones in Europe since last March. But sales have proved slow as the groups struggle to resolve bugs in their networks and phones.



A "3" spokesman said his company had no plans to launch laptop cards in the near future and would continue to focus on consumer products such as videocalls.



© Reuters

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