Novatel Wireless announces availability of HSDPA ExpressCard

October 11, 2006

Novatel Wireless announced that it has begun commercial shipments of its Merlin XU870 ExpressCard to leading HSDPA and UMTS carriers worldwide. Designed to operate on both North American and European HSDPA networks, the Merlin XU870 ExpressCard is the first commercially available HSDPA ExpressCard. Initial shipments began in the third quarter to leading carriers in several countries, including Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal and New Zealand. The Company expects to continue rollouts with both carriers and laptop manufacturers through the end of the year.

"We continue to move aggressively to meet our customers' evolving needs and are demonstrating our leadership position as the only mobile broadband solutions leader with commercial WWAN ExpressCard products on the market," said Rob Hadley, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing of Novatel Wireless. "With the introduction of the Merlin XU870 ExpressCard, we now have ExpressCards for both EV-DO and HSDPA networks, serving a fast-growing and unserved market of laptop models that incorporate only ExpressCard slots or both PCMCIA and ExpressCard slots."

The Merlin XU870 ExpressCard fits both 34 and 54 size slots and is a tri-band HSDPA/UMTS and quad-band EDGE/GPRS product that allows for worldwide roaming between HSDPA networks in North America and Europe. The Merlin XU870 ExpressCard has been initially configured for 3.6 Mbps data speeds and when mobile operators start providing 7.2 Mbps service, a software utility will be used to upgrade the card and boost its speed to 7.2 Mbps. The Merlin XU870 ExpressCard will allow new notebook platforms, with the ExpressCard slot, to take advantage of its performance and scalability for wireless broadband connectivity.