Vodafone deals 3G cards

Vodafone's data-only 3G service offers reasonable speed, but high charges may stifle business uptake

Vodafone took an early lead in the race to provide high-speed mobile access to email, the internet and back-end corporate databases when it released its third-generation (3G) Data Connect card in the UK on 2 April.

The new service is expected to offer wireless data rates of 100kbit/s to 384kbit/s to users in London, the M4 corridor and 10 other cities, including Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.

Vodafone's UK chief executive, Bill Morrow, said that for the new service the company will provide a wideband CDMA (W-CDMA) type I/II PC Card for use in laptop PCs, and this will be easy for IT departments to deploy and manage.

Nigel Deighton of analyst company Gartner said that in practice, users are unlikely to get the theoretical 384kbit/s maximum, because data rates will vary according to the number of people on the network. "A user might get 384kbit/s on a good day in the right place, but realistically data rates in the 100kbit/s to 144kbit/s range are more likely, which is equivalent to basic-rate ISDN and much higher than GPRS," he said.

Charges for Vodafone's service will range from £10 for 5MB per month to £85 for 500MB per month. Subscribers signing up before October will receive double the amount for the same price.

A one-off charge for the PC Card will range from £150 for the 5MB monthly service to £50 for users paying for 500MB. Capacity will be capped at a maximum of 1GB per month per user, and those going beyond their limit will be charged from 50 pence to £2 per megabyte.

Lars Westergaard, research manager for wireless communications at research company IDC, believes Vodafone's pricing strategy may deter users from subscribing to 3G services, and called for mobile operators to introduce flat-rate tariffs as soon as possible to attract customers.

"What you are asked to pay is appalling," Westergaard argued. "A user of this service can pay in the region of £10 to download a 5MB PowerPoint presentation and that has to be resolved."

Rival operator T-Mobile, which is set to launch a similar data-only 3G service in the London area in May, has said that it will introduce a flat-rate tariff, charging customers £70 per month for unlimited downloads, plus £199 for the card.

Sabine Wittlinger, head of propositions for Vodafone corporate marketing, said Vodafone will consider introducing a flat rate tariff in future to allow users to pay a set rate for unlimited downloads.