Vodafone Mobile Connect Card

Pro

It’s an exciting time for mobile data access: On the one side, we see the emergence of wireless hotspots, where with just the aid of a wireless LAN-enabled notebook and a pin number, business users can access broadband Internet services, their office network and e-mail in a café or airport and potentially in any urban location. On the other, GPRS services have matured and should offer almost universal Internet coverage to business travellers.

With its Mobile Connect product, Vodafone is making a strong case for the widespread adoption of the latter.

The beauty of the Mobile Connect Card is that you don’t have to be a technical wizard to use it. It delivers a suite of practical applications packaged in a very user-friendly environment.

The Mobile Connect Card takes the form of a Vodafone-branded PC card with antenna which slots into the PCMCIA card on the side of a standard notebook. The card allows you to insert a GPRS sim card into it so you can establish a data connection with the Vodafone network. It also bundles with a specially designed and Vodafone-branded software management system as part of the package. This software application pulls together all of the mobile applications into one user-friendly interface. It offers six ‘direct access’ buttons to connect or disconnect from the GPRS data connection, and a usage meter that helps you manage expenditure on the data connection by measuring the number of megabytes downloaded. The service also allows you to send a text message directly from your notebook. Direct access to Internet Explorer enables Web browsing and access to Web-based e-mail from the Vodafone.ie website, once you sign up to its subscribers’ service.

Ease-of-use and access to ‘killer apps’ aside, coverage, connection reliability and access speeds are other critical factors in making a truly mobile data product work; on two of these counts, I was disappointed with the product. Access and downloads speeds were fine, averaging at about 28Kbit/s, which is comparable to a standard dial-up connection over a fixed analogue line. Maintaining a connection was a different kettle of fish: I live in an apartment central Dublin and the coverage here was patchy to say the least. I couldn’t access the service at all in my living room. I had some success in my bedroom, albeit with a connection that would drop four to five times per session as the GPRS signal was lost — probably due to network congestion. In my office in Glasnevin, the signal was slightly more robust but still dropped calls in each session. The ultimate test for any mobile worker is the reliability of a communications product while they are on the road or travelling across the country. I took the train from Dublin to Ballina and enjoyed coverage in every county except for parts of Roscommon and Mayo where from Castlerea to Ballyhaunis, there wasn’t any GPRS coverage at all.

Specs

• Targets corporate users but there is many a small business manager or sales rep who would benefit from being able to send text messages and access Internet services sans wires.
• Rating: 3.5 stars
• Price: Vodafone Mobile Connect Card EUR299; Data-only SIM rental EUR7.50; EUR2 (per Mbyte) up to 5Mbyte, EUR1.50 from 5 to 20Mbyte and EUR1 for over 20Mbyte.

Vodafone: 1800-308020 (Ireland only)

10/07/2003

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