Product Reviews

PC Cards that provide internet access via mobile phone networks are nothing new, but recent developments with the networks themselves now make them a more viable proposition. GPRS is old news, of course, and while its 48Kbit/s download speed isn't anything to shout about, the 384Kbit/s offered by EDGE (think of it as GPRS 2) is much more useful. EDGE still isn't broadband though, and so far, it's only available in the UK from Orange. The 3G network, however, is available from all service providers and it has much more potential. UMTS - 3G for data - is still limited to 384Kbit/s, but HSDPA (effectively 3.5G) offers download speeds of up to 1.8Mbit/s.

Acronyms aside, the upshot of this is that mobile broadband

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is now a reality, and mobile broadband is what the T-Mobile Web 'n' Walk card is all about - its support for other networks is really just icing on the cake.

The good news is that T-Mobile has stuck to the broadband pricing plan we're all used to with the Web 'n' Walk card and its Professional tariff offers unlimited uploads and downloads for £20 a month. The bad news is that T-Mobile appears to have an unusual understanding of the word 'unlimited' - just 2GB of data a month, according to its fine print. Unless you're planning a mobile download spree though, this shouldn't prove much of a limitation, but T-Mobile's additional prohibition of instant messaging or internet telephony software is just plain silly.

There really isn't much else to say about the Web 'n' Walk card itself, but that's more a testament to its "it just works" approach than anything else. The supplied Communication Center software is simple to use and automatically connects to the fastest available network. It also supports multiple profiles, so it won't make a 3G connection when you're sat at home near your Wi-Fi network, for example. Download speeds over HSDPA are subject to signal strength and the inevitable vagaries of the internet, but 1.8Mbit/s isn't wide of the mark under ideal surfing conditions.