BROADBAND INTERNET anywhere is what Sony Ericsson is promising with a new USB modem for PCs and Macs. It supports no fewer than four flavours of GSM-style data.

So rather than having to rush to the nearest coffee-shop to find a Wi-fi connexion for your laptop, you can just pop the MD300 into the side of your computer and surf at broadband style speeds anywhere.

That's if your mobile operator is offering support for HSDPA, of course. In the UK, 3 reckons HSDPA will offer around 2.8 Mbit/s but Ericsson says 7.2 Mbit/s on the download side and an uplink of 1.4 Mbit/s is possible.

If the modem can't get an HSDPA connexion, it will fall back tostandard 3G which is about 200-300 Mbit/s. Now that O2 is supporting EDGE in the UK, the modem can even fall back to that.
EDGE offers about 150 Mbit/s. We'll all soon know, won't we, because all of those people rash enough to buy an Iphone will be reporting exactly how fast they can surf the web.

An interesting side to the MD300 is that the necessary PC software is actually built in. Mac owners will have to download drivers.

Hidden away in that software will be a pre-configured button which will give the PC access to Sony Ericsson's Playnow service. As far as we can tell, this'll be the first time PCs will be able to get the service.

Indeed, at the MD300's launch, Sony Ericsson were making big noises about a new and improved Playnow offering – which appears to be called the Playnow arena. This will give PCs access to music so that tracks can be side-loaded onto handsets as well as downloaded OTA (over-the-air). µ

L'INQ
Sony Ericsson

See Also
3 sells out of modems