Vodafone UK to Trial 3G Data

January 27, 2004 - source: BWCS

Vodafone UK has started a trial of its 3G Mobile Connect Card for laptop PCs, which is the first 3G data card trial in Britain. The pilot will initially be carried out among corporate customers and is to be extended to smaller business users further down the line. To date, Vodafone's 3G network has been rolled out in major urban areas such as London, Birmingham and Manchester and along the M4 corridor to Newbury. The operator is planning to launch an initial commercial 3G service in the spring, by which time it expects to cover around 30 percent of the population.

The 3G Mobile Connect Card promises transmission speeds of up to 384kbps in 3G coverage areas and provides seamless 2.5G connectivity when out of range. Though 3G data rates are an improvement on current GPRS or GSM dial-up rates, they still fall short of the 5Mbps+ connection speeds at WiFi hotspots, which puts the two technologies into direct competition. The more widespread coverage of 3G is an obvious point in its favour, though the technology is still not fully developed. Similar 3G data card trials currently being conducted in Germany have flagged up some problems with dropped connections when on the move and the cards were reported to be very battery-hungry.

Many in the industry expected Hutchison to offer a 3G data service instead of restricting itself to the more difficult consumer market, which is another indication that the technology still needs refining. It will be interesting to see to what extent Vodafone will have been able to iron out these problems before its own data trial.