David Flynn25 June 2008, 6:00 AM
A thumbdrive modem with microSD slot and a home HSPA-to-WiFi gateway may soon be offered by Australian telcos.
You may not know the name, but you’d recognise the gear. Chinese manufacturer Huawei manufactures the most popular mobile broadband modems used by Optus, Three and Vodafone, rebadging the kit for each carrier as it does for dozens of other operators around the world. (For an additional fee it can also cook up the matching client software.)
At this year’s CommunicAsia mobile communications expo the Chinese telecomms coloussus revealed three new additions to their carrier-only catalogue.
The first is the super-slim E180 mobile broadband stick, which follows the trend in downsizing mobile modems from the first generation of chunky soap-on-a-rope models. The stick is rated at 7.2Mbps download and 5.76Mbps for uploads, using what’s now most accurately called HSPA (high speed packet access) rather than HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access) because the high transfer speeds are no longer limited to the download lane.
It also uses a nifty flip-down flat USB connector with conductive tracks laid onto the plastic rather than the more common metal shroud of a full USB plug. For bonus points, Huawei has added a slot that can take microSD cards of up to 8GB capacity, turning the modem into a true USB memory key. The unit will be available in shiny ‘Vader black’ and elegant ‘iPod white’.
We were also pleasantly surprised to see two ‘3G gateways’ designed to pipe a mobile broadband signal to one or more PCs in the home or office. With mobile data prices becoming so affordable (
$15 for 1GB through Three, for example, kills ADSL2+ pricing in the low-usage category), these could offer a solution to users in areas in city and suburban areas which are served by ADSL.
The compact B932 is rated at 3.6Mbs (although uploads remain locked to 384Kbps) with a USB port and Ethernet jack for connecting a single PC or feeding the modem’s signal through to a fixed or wireless router. The E960 adds inbuilt 802.11g wireless plus four Ethernet ports.
The home gateways will work only on Windows XP and Vista, while the mobile modem also includes drivers for Mac OS 10.5. Huawei was unable to discuss which Australian carriers would be likely to add the E180, E960 or B932 onto their mobile broadband menu.