HP and Orange team up on mobile broadband

 

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By Maggie Holland in Barcelona

Posted on 16 Feb 2009 at 08:20

Just days after the GSMA announced that the world had reached its four billionth mobile connection, Orange and HP have partnered to push the numbers even higher.

The three-year, pan-European collaboration will add weight to the 100 million mobile broadband connections already counted as part of the four billion figure.

As part of the deal announced at Mobile World Congress, both companies will co-distribute laptops and HP Minis with either mobile or fixed broadband connectivity.

The partnership continues the trend of laptop manufacturers striking exclusive deals with mobile networks. Dell and Vodafone also have a pan-European deal that sees Mini Inspiron netbooks given away or heavily subsidised with mobile data contracts.

"The demand for mobile broadband is a global phenomenon," said Olaf Swantee, senior enterprise vice president of Orange's communications services. "Adding a select range of HP Notebooks and Minis to our successful portfolio of connected offers is just the kick-off phase."

"Together, we will define new ways to bring services to customers, from co-marketing activities through to distribution, supply chain and care, reinforcing our commitment to make it easy for everyone to access the internet and their content, whenever and wherever they want."

The Compaq Mini 700 is one of the new options available in the UK, costing £30 a month on a mobile-broadband bundle deal.