mobilkom austria, which launched its live, commercial HSDPA service in central Vienna on Saturday 21 January, is selling 300 HSDPA data cards a day, chief marketing officer Hannes Ametsreiter has told Mobile Europe.
The Vodafone-branded Mobile Connect Cards, which are available intially for EUR99 with a 500MB package of EUR39 (EUR29 at launch), have been shifting well since the operator launched its HSDPA service. Free upgrades of EDGE/UMTS cards have also been doing well, Ametsreiter said, with 300 users having taken the option to upgrade over the launch weekend. The price of the HSDPA cards and UMTS cards are the same.
mobilkom austria has used Nortel and Ericsson for its network upgrade, the same companies as supplied its existing UMTS network. Ametsreiter said the upgrade had been “smooth”, but added that some other vendors were still catching up on HSDPA.
That said, Ametsreiter reckons there will be other operators offering HSDPA within Austria “within weeks”.
Option is providing the data cards. Ametsreiter said he thought there may some other HSDPA enabled devices later this year, but indicated that the operator considered it needed more content to offer to make the value case for HSDPA enabled smart phones. For now, he thought that fast data access and internet surfing for laptop users created a clear value proposition.
mobilkom austria plans to have all Austria’s main cities covered by HSDPA the summer of 2006, Ametsreiter said.
…Nemsic steps up
mobilkom austria ceo Boris Nemsic will become ceo of the Telekom Austria Group after current ceo Heinz Sundt steps down in May. Sundt tendered his resignation today in a meeting with the group’s supervisory board. Nemsic will become group ceo on 24 May in addition to his position as ceo of the wireless arm of Telekom Austria.