Virgin UK gearing up for laptop data in fourth quarter

Apparently feeling a little celebratory after negotiating lower wholesale rates for voice and data, British MVNO Virgin Mobile has said that it intends to start offering broadband data cards some time in the fourth quarter of the year. In the UK, Virgin operates on top of T-Mobile's wireless backbone, so customers of the new data service should have a pretty nice HSDPA footprint with which to work -- a totally upside-down version of the US picture, where Virgin uses Sprint, offers no data cards (hell, they barely admit the existence of data on their handsets), and rocks CDMA to the core. Weird how the world works sometimes.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 13th 2008 10:53AM]

Might not catch on here (in the US), most of the major carriers Verizon, Altell, Att, etc... do not require a deposit or credit check on there data cards and already offer unlimited plans and "free" cards.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 13th 2008 5:03PM]

I'd LOVE to see a pay-per-day or pay-per-hour HSPA or EVDO data card here -- similar to what Sunrise is now offering in Switzerland (search Engadget Mobile for "sunrise")

There's a huge market of notebook who'd love to not be completely dependent on Wi-Fi hotspots when they're travelling, but just don't travel enough to justify a $60 a month contract.

Heck, I'd take a pay-per-day option to tether with my Sprint phone, and be happy.