Vodafone UK intros 'TopUP and Go' pay-as-you-go modem
By Jacob Schulman 
posted Dec 17th 2008 10:37PM
posted Dec 17th 2008 10:37PM
Attention wireless broadband-loving Brits, crack open your wallets because Vodafone's got something in store for all of you that have been more nice than naughty this year. The 'TopUP and Go' USB modem is now available from the UK carrier for a modest £39, which works out to about $60 if you were somehow able to get this magical deal stateside. To sweeten the deal, Voda's throwing in the first 1GB of data and they're taking a departure from the usual 30 day grace period for credit expiration. Speeds are quoted as being 1-2 Mbps, and it even doubles as a 4GB flash drive -- consider us sold. We hope you're listening, all you contract-obsessed US carriers.
Yeah, but how much do you pay per GB?
It's £15 per GB for a month, the O2 pay and go modem seems better value for money. It's £29.99 for the modem, which can be used as a usb flash drive using a microsd card. For £15 for a month you get 3GB, but they also have a daily package which gives you 500MB for £2 a day
They both offer up to 3.6Mb/s speeds, not the 1-2Mb/s engadget have reported
My stepfather was here in the US a few weeks ago and was enormously surprised to hear there was no real PAYG Internet access, so he couldn't just buy a 3G data card, pump money into a SIM, and use the Internet as he wished in the same way as, apparently, is common in the UK.
I wonder what it'd take for the major US 3G operators to actually get their heads around the concept? Or is it going to be LTE that gives everyone the final push, with economies of scale (everyone standardized around LTE) and an open architecture with SIM card support making the technology as ubiquitous as Wifi and any operator not making every effort to grab customers shooting themselves in the foot.
PAYG mobile broadband has not been around in the uk for that long but pay monthly mobile broadband has been around for a long time now
... Why can't we get this in the US?
I'm tethering on Boost Mobile's slower-than-death IDEN network for free.
I mean, it's a billing loophole, but still, it's less-than-dialup speed.
But hey, I guess you get what you pay for.
We have had pre-paid mobile broadband for quite some time and the best deal we have is $20/mth for 6GB for the first six months and $40/mth rfor the rest of the contract.