Vodafone to gamble on fixed/mobile

ACCORDING TO a report in the FT, Vodafone may be intending to announce that it will launch services similar to its Zuhause offering in Germany to other territories where it operates.

Zuhause is Vodafone's answer to O2's Genion service which O2 has been offering since 1999. Basically it takes the concept of a 'home zone' around your house to provide calls at rates equivalent to fix line calls.

However, both O2 and Vodafone have extended that capability to providing Internet access via the 3G (W-CDMA) network.

Significantly Vodafone has said that it will employ HSDPA (otherwise known as Superfast 3G) to reach speeds of 1.8 Mbit/s.

Vodafone has re-branded Option's GlobeSurfer Icon data card to the Zuhause EasyBox to do so. When HSDPA isn't available, the GlobeSurfer card falls back to 384 Kbit/s over 3G or 247 Kbit/s over EDGE.

This will be good news for Ericsson which is supplying Vodafone Germany with the kit to support HSDPA across its 3G network.

Incidentally O2's version of Internet access over 3G is known as surf@home. µ