It looks like there’s life in US WiMax yet. US providers Clearwire and SprintNextel have agreed to combine their WiMax networks into a new company, under the Clearwire brand.

They’ve got some powerful friends on board too: Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks have agreed to finance the new company to the tune of $3.2 billion. Sprint will remain the biggest shareholder in the company with 51 percent.

After all the trouble with its Xohm WiMax network Sprint has been having lately, a lot of people had predicted a swift death for the technology. Not so. It seems Google and Intel, both of whom have a lot of clout and a vested interested in seeing the technology succeed, are determined to keep the network going. Hopefully this is the shot in the arm mobile WiMax needs.

I’ve been playing with WalkingHotspot. Does what it says on the tin. Works with Windows Mobile and Symbian devices.

When an operator says you can get ‘up to 7.2Mbps’ what sort of speed do you actually expect from your mobile broadband modem? According to the the BBC, 3 has reported Vodafone to the Advertising Standards Authority over the wording of its mobile broadband advertising, contending that ‘up to’ just isn’t good enough.

The Beeb says 3 has accused Vodafone of not making it clear that when it says ‘up to 7.2Mbps’ consumers actually won’t get anything like 7.2Mbps. Vodafone says it tells its customers when they buy a device that they shouldn’t expect to get top speeds.

In first days of wired broadband, this argument came up repeatedly and the regulator pretty much decided that putting ‘up to’ before a speed is enough of a caveat for users. For most man-in-the-street users, as long as they can get a service that lets them browse and send attachments in good speed, that’s enough for them. That said, a bit more realism in speed boasts never hurt anyone.

3G could potentially kill off wi-fi, according to analysts Infonetics Research, as more and more of us use mobile broadband data cards rather than the wireless hotspots provided by coffee shops and the like as the service becomes “more available, more affordable, and a higher performance choice”

Infonetics says that sales of mobile data cards will nearly quadruple between 2007 and 2011, hitting $2.9 billion. The analysts predict adoption will be driven by lower mobile broadband prices resulting from the launch of HSDPA networks. The report also says that worldwide mobile data subscribers will reach 144 million by 2011.

Anyone who’s used a mobile data card knows they’re a lifesaver. I wouldn’t be surprised if before long mobile data subscriptions are the de facto connectivity for anyone taking their laptop outside their house.

It looks like China’s 3G efforts are inching closer to reality. According to reports, China Mobile will kick off its trials of homegrown 3G standard TD-SCDMA in eight cities from 1 April: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen and Qinhuangdao.

Forbes says the operator will give away 20,000 TD-SCDMA mobile numbers free and will give way the same number of handsets for nothing, with other subscribers offered discounts of 100 to 200 yuan on their phones.

Things are certainly moving in the right direction for TD-SCDMA - and the Olympics looks like it’s figuring large in people’s minds: five out of the eight cities are Games venues.

Critical Path are the daddy when it comes to messaging.  They’ve been in the game a long time.  I remember, back the dotcom days, we were hunting around for the best email provider on the planet to offer whitelabeled email services for our visitors.  We selected Critical Path; alas… we didn’t quite have the budgets of Microsoft and Yahoo, so in the end we weren’t able to do business.  (I secretly longed to be able to offer our audience a decent service like Yahoo or Hotmail though). Critical Path has been around the block though and it’s no surprise they’ve taken one look at the burgeoning mobile platform and nodded an affirmative ‘aye’ and got stuck in.

Memova is their consumer messaging service for mobile operators (and broadband providers) and Hong Kong’s 3 has just gone live with the service offering.  It’s an interesting offering: -

Unlike enterprise solutions, Memova Mobile works on virtually any mobile phone and does not require users to download or install client software. Additionally, the solution offers an easily managed inbox, delivering email messages from approved sources only - eliminating mobile spam and giving consumers complete control over their email experience.

I’m going to see if I can take a look and see exactly how this works.  No clients, no downloads and an easily managed inbox?  Perhaps it works with the handset’s existing ‘email’ functionality — since almost every handset, even a shocking Motorola RAZR — can usually cope with POP or IMAP email access.

No word on whether 3UK customers will be getting a similar offering as yet though.  The full release is here.

For those of you who may not be a regular reader of our dear blog, I’ll catch you up to speed.

My name is Krystal, I live in Canada, and our Mobile Industry sucks.

Now that you’re all caught up and sitting comfortably, we’ll begin.

When I heard that Bell was offering unlimited data, I got excited. Super excited. OH MY GOD SOMEONE HERE IS FINALLY CLUEING IN! excited, and I jumped at the chance to demo it on an HTC Touch.

I’m a bit of a normob, not by choice, by necessity. I would happily use my phone to the extent of a James Whatley, but I can’t. Why? 5 cents/kb hurts. Big time.

So after the helpful guys in media relations at Bell (hi guys!) got in touch (get it? touch? ok bad pun.) and said they’d send me one, I was ecstatic and almost started drooling at the thought of having unlimited data all to myself.

The Touch arrived on a Friday and I quickly ripped open the packaging and found myself playing with it. My husband of course sat down with the instruction manual (he’s one of those who has to read the entire user guide first) while I plugged it in and instantly started fiddling. Let me take this moment to say, I hate Windows, and Windows Mobile. I am a Mac and Symbian girl through and through. But for the sake of having unlimited data, I’m willing to sacrifice.

First impressions:

I like the fact that it has a, for lack of a better word, rubbery coating. That was different than any other phone I’ve had. Keeps it from slipping out of my hand. Nice big screen, always a plus for me (considering I’m practically blind without my contact lenses) although it being a touch screen is going to throw me off slightly, I do like having buttons to push. It fits into the cell phone pocket in my handbag (important for a girl!) but alas, Windows Mobile.

Well I’ll deal with it.

First of all, I’ll get it out of the way. The stylus drove me up the wall. (A common occurrence here at SMS Text News) I stopped using it after the first day. I just couldn’t handle it. A) they’re so friggin small and awkward to hold onto and B) I looked like an idiot.

So I ditched the stylus, and thanks to my fake acrylic nails (they’re not just for fashion) I managed to get by. I basically used the qwerty keyboard. The weird Touch version of T9 was annoying, and without the stylus, the transcriber was useless. But the keyboard wasn’t bad, although I had to get used to spelling words out letter by letter. (Which meant I tend to keep emails and text short, much to Ewan’s joy I’m sure)

I won’t get too much into the menus and stuff, it’s Windows Mobile, so you get the idea. Start menu, Internet Explorer etc etc. I tried snapping a few pictures with the camera, but after having an N95, a 2 megapixel camera just seemed like a big disappointment.

I went to work setting up my email account and instantly they started flooding in. Ahh, I think, it’s so simple, they just come to me! I don’t need to connect to my mailbox on my N95, download the message. (Which I usually only do when I’ve got wifi, as I only am allowed 12MB a month currently, and that would get eaten up awfully quickly) I got busy downloading some applications and I sent off my first text message to Ewan who was hiding in San Fran somewhere “Look! A Text from my HTC Touch!” and got a reply somewhere along the lines of “Welcome to the 21st Century with the rest of us.”

Cheeky.

Anyway, onto Unlimited Data!

On Sunday I was up early and off to a bowling tournament. (I will take this moment to interject with, yes, I am a professional 5-Pin bowler) So I drive there, convinced I know where it is, because I do, although I haven’t been there in at least 5 years. We pull into the parking lot, I scan the plaza and hmmm, where has the bowling alley gone? They must have moved it! I know it’s here! Hmmm. I know! I pull out the HTC Touch and google for their website.

Oh. It’s in the plaza across the road.

Woops.

While I was there, someone asked me a question, which I don’t remember at the moment, and I didn’t know the answer. Normally this would result in wandering around asking a million people if they knew, but never fear! I simply pulled out the HTC Touch and googled for the answer. Simple.

The next day my husband had to go into Toronto to a client and took the train. He sent me a text on the way home to say he was on the 5:30 train. A quick check on my HTC Touch told me what time it came in.

I bought books on Amazon (that were already on my wish list), showed my husband the new jacket I had bought online earlier that day while we were out eating dinner and checked my online banking. Gone was my usual line of “don’t let me forget to show you online when we get home…”

I downloaded ring tones, sent Ewan numerous text messages in San Fran and even did that crazy thing we tend to do with phones and made a few calls.

It was brilliant really, I was getting email anywhere. I could update my Facebook status anywhere, I could read the latest celebrity gossip ANYWHERE. Any time I wanted. I felt like a part of the in crowd, what every one of you have. (Or most of you anyway) Finally.

Don’t read this as me hating the HTC Touch, I actually quite liked it, but am unsure if I could handle it as my everyday phone. It would be great for some I’m sure. I’m just picky. I need buttons. (Upon purchasing an iPod Touch I realized the same thing, an iPhone would drive me crazy)

What I did love was the unlimited data. Anytime, anywhere. I just couldn’t get enough and quickly became an addict. (Seriously, the first couple days I was without the Touch and the Unlimited Data, I actually found myself staring off into space, tapping my fingers when I was out somewhere thinking, my god, someone might have poked me on Facebook and I CAN’T CHECK. My email isn’t coming to me anymore, I don’t know what the current weather is. I felt so beyond isolated. Here I am sitting in the middle of the mall, surrounded by people, and I was alone. Completely lost without it. (I totally understand the crackberry habit now!)

BIG kudos to Bell. THANKYOU. For one, letting me demo the Touch, and two for having the balls to take the bull by the horns, notice we’re stuck in the dark ages and offer unlimited data.

Please fellow Canadians, start demanding what you’re missing. You want unlimited data, trust me. And you don’t want to have to pay a fortune for it, it’s not necessary. Bell’s rate is only $7 a month on top of your existing plan. It’s totally worth it. GO GET IT. If you’re not with Bell, and locked into some hideous 36 month contract while lovingly cradling your RAZR, WAKE UP. Smell the unlimited data coffee and starting demanding from the others (Rogers, Telus, Fido, Virgin, anyone) what you want.

Now if only I could get it on my N95…

NTT DoCoMo has been pushing ahead with boosting network speeds: the Japanese operator says it has notched up a downlink transmission rate of 250Mbps over an outdoor LTE test network.

DoCoMo is now working on testing handover from one base station to another, and how LTE performs in both indoor and outdoor environments, carrying out the trials near its R&D labs in Yokosuka.

It’s great to see companies making bigger and bigger leaps in bandwidth - good news for efficiency as much as anything. The only downside? DoCoMo expects it won’t finish testing the technology til 2009, so we’re still years away from actually getting our hands on devices and networks that can deliver this speed. Why do operators keep teasing us like this?!

Check out this story from Mike Smith — he’s added it as a comment to this post from last April: SMS Text News » Archives » Unlimited data on Orange UK for £8 a month. No, I’m not kidding!

Unbelievable!!! I was on a £4.00 per month unlimited GPRS wap package with Orange for 4 years. When I say unlimited, it was subject to a fair usage policy of 10mbs per month. So much for unlimited!!! I was actually using 400-500mbs per month, on a regular basis, and no one said a word.
I then upgraded to a Nokia N95, not one of my better decisions, but I needed access to Orange internet, not wap. I was offered a £5.00 per month unlimited off peak bundle, or an anytime 30mb bundle for £8.00 per month. 30mbs, I would have got through that in an hour!!! I reluctantly opted for the off peak package, at least I wouldn’t need to re-mortgage the house at the end of the month!

Just by chance I rang customer services (now there’s a breach of the trades description act) to see if any new data plans had become available that would be more suitable. To my surprise, and great delight, I was offered anytime unlimited usage for £8.00 per month. Now that’s a bargain in anyones book, so I grabbed it straight away.

Knowing Orange of old, they may suddenly realise just how generous that is and withdraw it, just like they did with my £4.00 wap package. The bottom line is, they can withdraw the offer, but if you are already on the plan, they can’t take you off of it. My advice would be to grab it while it’s available, and if you change your service plan, don’t be talked out of giving it up. Make it plain you keep want to keep the data bundle no matter what. £8.00 per month unlimited internet usage is a very good deal indeed, now if only it was possible to get a connection………………………………:-))

Are you on Orange? What’s your story with mobile data? I always thought Orange was the black sheep of the UK operators with a ridiculous set of data rates.

If you’re a regular visitor to the UK or if you need mobile broadband now and again, but not enough to take out a contract, this might well be a wicked deal for you.

3UK have just announced that they’re selling their USB modems at 69.99 pounds on pay as you go. Genius. Last year, 3UK kicked the mobile broadband marketplace into touch with the launch of their tenner-a-month mobile broadband service (I’ve got one of those and it’s wicked).

Many shops in the 3UK empire couldn’t actually re-stock fast enough, such was the demand. Indeed, a USB modem is no longer the domain of the uber-geek. I come across lots of normobs who have one now.

The other mobile operators here in the UK were caught asleep at the wheel. Vodafone continued to knock along at at 30+ pounds/month price plan until recently — losing many a customer to the very tempting 3UK offer. T-Mobile, too, one of the first to launch mobile broadband, were steeply priced compared to the tenner-a-month deal.

The next stage for domination for 3UK is pay as you go — for causal users, international travellers and those (like me) up for impulse purchases. You can now walk into a 3UK shop — today — and walk out with a USB modem that will work instantly.

All you need to do is top it up. Quoting from 3UK’s release:

With the current Pay As You Go price plan customers can get a 1GB data allowance with a £10 Add-on, 3GB with a £15 Add-on and 7GB with a £25 Add-on. Each Add-on lasts for 30 days.

3’s most popular 3GB package provides users with up to 2000 plain text emails and 100 hours of surfing the web, with an additional 100 two minute video downloads and 200 music tracks.

Reasonable to me, particularly if you’re spunking 20 pounds a day on wifi fees at your hotel.

More details and ordering here.

While AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile were all introducing unlimited voice plans last week, Sprint kept quiet. Now it’s unleashed its own unlimited offering and, to put it simply, it sounds great. For $99.99 a month, new and existing users can get uunlimited voice, data, text, e-mail, web browsing, Sprint TV, Sprint Music, GPS navigation and more for $99.99 a month.

Considering the best equivalent offer from rivals has either unlimited voice or unlimited voice and data, Sprint has one-upped its competitors in a big way. That said, it really needs to - the new offer comes on the back of the company’s latest set of financial results which show a massive loss after the operator took a writedown on the value of Nextel, which it bought in 2005.

Sprint has a hard road ahead of it but if anything could turn users’ heads, it’s offers like this.

The S60 Blogs are a source of all types of information, from application betas to marketing thoughts, and every now and again, a gem such as this post from Peter Harbeson. As a bit of an experiment, using his S60 handset, he wanted to see just how much he could do with his phone using ONLY the web browser. Peter was surprised to find that, somehow, he was able to do just about everything.

Peter’s list included being able to:

keep my calendar in any of several web-based calendars (Google, Yahoo, Plaxo, and probably a dozen others)

send and receive email using the web (pharbeson [at] gmail [dot] com, by the way)

send SMS using bigfoot.com

maintain a to-do list

view and edit Office documents using Google docs

listen to music

watch videos

back up data (although most of my data isn’t local, so it’s already backed up)

maintain and use a contact list — this is not as well integrated as it could be, but it’s possible

read ebooks

subscribe to and read RSS feeds

subscribe to podcasts (although I listen to them without the browser)

He goes on to wonder just what the benefits of an entirely browser-based UI would really be. Obviously currently there’s a network connectivity issue, but what if that was solved? How much easier would it be to ‘fix’ the UI or customise it to individual users if it was merely a web page?

NASA and the British National Space Centre are working together to put a network on the moon. The pair have set up a working group and reckon the cellular coverage could be in place within the next decade to help transmit data between lunar explorers and their earth-bound base.

The collaboration is set to result in a lunar exploration called MoonLITE, or Moon Lightweight Interior and Telecoms Experiment, scheduled to take off some time after 2012 and will see a communications link set up between the earth and the moon itself.

Wow. This could be the most remote mobile coverage ever.

Bell Canada caught a significant amount of attention around the world (most notably in Canada) back in November last year when they announced an unlimited data option for $7/month with their upcoming HTC Touch device. We received lots of requests from Canadian readers asking all sorts of questions — principally along the lines of ’so what will it be like’ and ‘is this really true?’

Our very own Toronto Star, Krystal, has been knocking her head against the wall with Fido for years so she jumped at the opportunity to check out both the HTC Touch and the feel of unlimited data in a country previously regarded as having one of the most backward mobile industries on the planet.

I’ve asked Krystal to do a daily diary of how she gets on with the device. So, for all the Canadians reading, standby — and if you’ve any particular questions, zap them to Krystal and she’ll make sure they’re answered.

(I’m paraphrasing the ’stink’ bit.)

Link: Vodafone rejects EU call for caps on data roaming charges - International Herald Tribune

The Vodafone chief said he was aware of consumer discontent with high wireless data charges, and Vodafone had been responding by lowering charges.

“Just look at our prices,” Sarin said. “Nobody has to tell me what our customers are telling us. We are talking to our customers every day.”

Should that reply from Arun actually be:

“We are talking to our customers every day and telling them to stick it.”

I wonder.

There’s not much use having a ‘dialogue’ when, simply, customers want much, much cheaper data roaming fees. This opinion is based on the 1,200 pounds I inadvertently spent in Cannes last year, thanks to Big Red.

But if I was Vodafone, I’d listen, smile nicely, tell the regulator to stick it, raise the inclusive amount of roaming data a little to placate the heavy users and do my best to avoid lowering the prices until market pressure absolutely positively requires price adjustment. Exactly what Vodafone appears to be doing — and, well, they’re a business. Fair play.

It’s just not fair

I caught this ad in the national press today:

3UK has been doing great business with it’s 10 pounds/month USB modem offer ever since it came out late last year — previously, Vodafone’s offering was a minimum of 30 pounds/month.

To qualify for the 15/month offer, you need a new 18-month contract and the deal includes a reasonable 3GB of data/month.

Now Vodafone has dropped prices to the level of other operators, I think it’s safe to declare mobile broadband as a service for the masses.

If you’re in Barcelona this year, you can expect to see number of players battling it out to show you working examples of LTE technology, from the network to the devices.

Motorola will be showcasing online racing car games played over LTE, as well as LTE enabled VoIP calls. Freescale will also be demonstrating HD over LTE using its processors, and is already delivering data rates of 96Mbps downlink and 86Mbps. It’s also betting higher speeds are on the way as soon as the standard matures. Meanwhile, according to a couple of reports, Ericsson will be making what it calls the “world’s first call” on a handheld device using LTE.

While it’s great to hear about all the raw speeds LTE will make possible, it’s the applications that will really make this 3G successor exciting. All suggestions welcome on what will be the killer app for LTE.

From June 2008, Vodafone’s top whack mobile roaming bundle will go from €75 to €60. And they’ll increase the international roaming allowance from 100mb/month to 150mb/month. Which, if you do a little bit of spin, gets you a 45% reduction in the price per megabyte.

Sounds good. It is good. All moving in the right direction. That European Commissioner is really sorting things out isn’t she?

Here, for the Big Red fans amongst us, is the full release:

Vodafone today announces a price reduction of up to 45% to its monthly data roaming tariff for European business travellers. This price cut strengthens Vodafone’s leading position in the industry following its introduction last summer of a daily pricing plan, costing €12.

From June 2008, the maximum charge for Vodafone’s monthly data roaming bundle will be lowered to €60 per month – a €15 price cut – in a move designed to make it even more affordable for customers to use their laptop computers wirelessly when abroad. At the same time, the company will increase the amount of data a customer can use to at least 150MB in most European markets from 100MB, meaning that the price per megabyte will reduce by around 45%.

Arun Sarin, Chief Executive,, commented: “Vodafone led the market with the launch in 2005 of its innovative Passport voice roaming tariff, which is now used by more than 16 million customers, and we were also the first mobile operator to introduce a monthly data roaming tariff in Europe.

“Today’s announcement builds on those two initiatives by giving corporate customers real choice between straightforward daily or monthly low-cost, data pricing plans to fit their travelling habits. Our focus now is to offer consumers, who are increasingly using their mobile phones to access the Internet whilst in their hotel room, in a café or on the beach, with predictable data roaming tariffs.”

In addition to reducing the cost of its monthly tariff, Vodafone is introducing a variant of its European flat-rate daily tariff to key non-EU destinations. For a flat-rate fee of €30 per 24-hour session for 50 megabyte (MB) of data use, customers can pay per day for using their laptops in key business centres such as the USA, Asia Pacific region and in South Africa.

These changes will be implemented by Vodafone’s operating companies from the end June, this year, and will be tailored to meet the individual needs of customers in specific markets.

Customers will also benefit from Vodafone’s extensive international mobile broadband network, which covers more countries than any other operator. Using the latest 3G broadband (HSDPA) network technology, customers with a Vodafone Mobile Connect USB modem or a Vodafone Mobile Connect 3G broadband data card on either a per day or per month tariff will be able to connect just as they do in their home country and get download speeds of up to 3.6Mbps in selected areas.

It’s a little bit naughty to say ‘consumers, who are increasingly using their mobile phones to access the Internet whilst in their hotel room’ when this tariff is, to my understanding, ONLY available for broadband data cards/modems and NOT handsets.

The Register is reporting that 3, KPN and Play have got together to agree wholesale data rates cuts of €.25 per megable for roaming. Interesting. The Register reckons that’ll hopefully reduce prices over the next 12 months.

I wonder what the deal will be to consumers. Wholesale? €.25 per meg. To the end user? €25.00 per meg?

Sounds like a fair whack up.

I’m only kidding. I think €1 per meg would, at least, be better than before.

We shall see.

(Thanks for spotting Mark)

Before you think ‘my gosh, Fido, the mobile operator based in the year 1821, has arrived in the 21st Century’, let me stop you there.

Last week Krystal from SMS Text News upgraded to the 12 meg/month valuepack since she’s sporting a brand new Nokia N95 and wants to, obviously, use it’s data capabilities. The ‘valuepack’ was $18 (included quite a few other options, as well as 12meg).

Looking again today, Krystal discovered that it’s now $20 — which includes unlimited data. Or you can simply add unlimited data for $7. More details here.

There’s a sting in the tail though:

The Unlimited surfing on your Fido option includes unlimited mobile surfing on your handset and is only available on selected handsets only (non-Fido certified handsets, Windows Mobile devices and PC cards are not eligible). Data usage incurred on ineligible handsets and devices, incurred while tethering (using a handset or device as a wireless modem or laptop) or incurred using non-Fido (third party) applications downloaded to your handset will be subject to a pay-per-use charge of 5¢ per KB. Option applies within Canada only. While roaming outside Canada, data transmission charge of 5¢ per KB apply, except in the U.S. where data transmission charges of 1¢ per KB apply.

It’s basically unlimited mobile surfing. Try and use ShoZu and they’ll screw you. Try and use ANYTHING that isn’t Fido approved (so, any decent mobile application then), and you’ll be nailed for the usual data costs.

Deary me. They just.don’t.get.it. They really are determined to hold on to their metered billing, aren’t they? No wonder Canada’s mobile market is so backward. And it’ll stay that way for a long time when consumers are charged silly fees for mobile internet.

Ok switch to positive mode.

Still, good news. Heading, generally, in the right direction…yes?

Mobile software maker Funambol and advertising firm Amobee have teamed up to launch advertising-sponsored mobile email, which the pair say will “shift content subsidisation from mobile users to advertisers. It reflects the growing influence of mobile users”.

The product will use Amobee’s Handset Application Programming Interface and Funambol’s push email client, with ads and brands displayed in users’ emails.

Potentially, the pairing could mean users getting totally free mobile email in return for viewing advertising messages.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people trot out the statistic that only single-digit percentages of the world’s email inboxes are mobilised. Giving away the software sounds like a good way to boost the numbers - but how willing will operators be to lose all those tasty data revenues?

More on Lenovo’s shift in mobility - the company has revealed its chosen Ericsson to supply embedded HSPA modems for its laptops. Good news for Ericsson - it’s its first customer for the devices.

The pair said “select Lenovo ThinkPad notebooks” will come packing HSPA inside, but didn’t give away which models will be included although Ericsson did say the first so-called “mobile broadband” laptops will be out early this year. According to Ericsson, by 2010, 100 million laptops will come with built-in HSPA.

It will be interesting to see whether Lenovo will strike deals with operators in the same way that Dell has with Vodafone, or to leave the modem unlocked for the consumer to choose the operator with the best deal for them. Fingers crossed for option two.

If reports are correct - and I really hope they are - the costs of data-roaming could be about to come down. According to a report in The Telegraph, T-Mobile is working to broker a deal between Europe’s mobile operators to cut roaming charges - before the EC steps in and makes them do it anyway.

The EC Commissioner in charge of such things, Viviane Reding, managed to cut the cost of voice roaming by up to 70 percent last year but didn’t mandate any cuts in data costs at the time. Now, she told Reuters she’s ready to take on data roaming and would like to see some action on costs before the summer, although probably not as much as consumers would.

If last year’s voice roaming saga is anything to go by, we can expect the operators to fall over themselves cutting prices in an effort to dissuade the EC from passing some more regulation. Whether regulation is needed or not is a matter for debate - oddly enough, the operators say no and the regulators say yes - but either way, it looks like mobile data will only get cheaper.

Vodafone has taken a knife to its 3G pricing, cutting the cost of a monthly data subscription by half, to £15, for a distinctly reasonable allowance of 3GB, in a move that looks like it’s designed to open up 3G data cards from businessmen on the go to the average Joe.

Of course, you’ll need to sign up for an 18 or 24 month contract but Voda will sweeten the deal by throwing in a USB modem for gratis. For commitment phobes, there’s a 30-day package for £20 with no contract to sign and for roamers, there’s a £9.99 option for 24 hours’ access if you’re on one of Vodafone’s networks outside the UK.

While Vodafone UK has been a little slow to introduce this sort of much-needed commodity pricing - its Aussie arm unveiled a 5GB for $39 (about £18) in December - halving prices will hopefully see the number of data users shoot up. Obviously cheaper 3G is good news for consumers but it could well be a smart move for Vodafone too, with the operator revealing data revenue is up by 50 percent while data card users up by 100 percent. The only downside on the deal? No word on whether existing users will get to take up the new tariff or if it’s only for newbies.

The Wall Street Journal has a report that Sprint and Clearwire, who previously were chatting about going in together on a nationwide WiMax network, have started talking again, this time looking to outside investors such as Google, Intel, and Best Buy to help fund the high-speed network. Sprint’s WiMax network, dubbed ‘Xohm’, is set to be launched sometime this year.

Clearwire has been operating in various areas of the U.S for several years now, and they do a tremendous job of taking over markets. I was in college in Abilene, TX, a small town in West Texas of roughly 115,000, when Clearwire came in, and there were billboards everywhere, three retail locations, and 2 mall kiosks in a matter of weeks. The network itself is awesome. You have a modem that you simply plug into a power outlet to get the wireless signal. My roommates and I switched from cable internet to Clearwire for roughly the same monthly cost and didn’t notice a difference in speeds at all.

Clearwire currently covers 44 markets in 16 States. I’m anxious to see Sprint and Clearwire work together to spread across the entire US soon. Time will tell if they’re able to work together and get some investors in to help them out.

(Image courtesy of Intomobile.com)