Launches MDA Varrio II; 3 to have HSDPA phones by Xmas
T-Mobile announced the launch of the first non-data card HSDPA device in the UK on the day 3, carrying outpress demos of HSDPA at its London, Oxford Street store, said it would have HSDPA phones available for the Christmas market.
T-Mobile announced availability of the MDA Vario II with HSDPA. The wireless handheld has 3G/HSDPA and WiFi capability, and is based on Windows Mobile 5.0.
T-Mobile says it is the first mobile HSDPA handset to be available in the UK, and is clearly aiming the MDA at a business market, given its top price of £299.
Derek Williamson, Head of Business Marketing, T-Mobile UK says, “By launching the MDA Vario II, T-Mobile is ensuring that our customers are the first to truly experience broadband-speed connectivity on the move via their mobile phone.”
Meanwhile Graham Baxter, technical solutions director at 3, was showing journalists a live demonstration of HSDPA on handsets from LG and Motorola – a prototype HSDPA Razr in the latter case.
Baxter said that the company would have devices ready for the Christmas market, with its HSDPA network rollout taking place over the rest of this year and due to complete in early 2007. 3 will launch service in London and Manchester in the final quarter of this year.
3’s demo showed video streaming and downloads from the web about 4-5 timers faster than WCDMA 3G. Response times for web site browsing was three times quicker.
Baxter said that apart from providing a quicker experience, and being able to support higher encodings of videos, HSDPA could open up new areas of activity such as album downloads and podcasting.
Meanwhile Baxter was sceptical about some vendor claims that opeerators are demanding top modulation and up to 15 codes. Baxter said that the demo he was giving, which employed 5 codes and 8PSK modulation (giving a users a maximum throughput of 1.8Mbps) was providing a great customer experience. 3 had abn advantage, he said, in having three bands of 5MHz available, so could support a higher number of users at that data rate than some of its competitors, he said.
3 is using Nokia software in the North of the country, and NEC in the South, to support HSDPA.