Eee PC and HSDPA Bundle in France
January 22nd, 2008 by antFor those interested in having HSDPA on their Eee PC, French carrier SFR has a bundle just for you. It includes a white ASUS Eee PC 4G and a HSDPA modem together for €299 (or $435 usd).
The interesting aspect of this is that SPF pledges to give back €100 back if you’re willing to sign a contract for HSDPA service.
Unfortunately, the modem uses the USB slot instead of being fully integrated into the Eee PC. As we reported back in December, Not all of the latest Eee PC’s have the internal mini-PCIe connector anymore. As a result, there’s no easy way to simply snap in an internal wireless card.
It does make you think about several questions- Would any US based carriers offer a solution like this? Would it be worth it? Could a carrier offer a free Eee PC with wireless contract? Did ASUS remove the mini-PCIe connector so certain carriers could do something like this?
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:05 am
This offer is bad in the way that after the first gigabyte of transfer, speeds are capped to 128k to maintain “qos” I guess.
So it’s only good for email and the very basic stuff, but then I guess that’s what people buying Eee Pc’s want.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:29 am
A subsidized EEE with a data contract would be nice for the techies but I don’t think Joe Public would buy it. iPhones and PDAs sell and are hitting the general consumer more as prices drop but I don’t see an EEE data deal adding more significant sales. As for the Mini-PCI I thought that only worked for SSD’s? I think the next-gen EEE’s with WiMAX and maybe Bluetooth will be the way to go, I don’t see mobile phone carrier sponsored EEE’s hitting the market anytime soon.