You've just finished your breakfast on the patio and now you're thinking of the problems you have to deal with at the office. You are eager to begin, as every morning after all, with checking your e-mails, but the traffic makes you wait for several tens of minutes until you can actually do that. However, mobile telephony operator Zapp has found a solution for high-speed wireless Internet access right from the patio of your own home.
Zapp unveiled a modem, which is slightly bigger than a pack of cigarettes and allows you to connect to the Internet with your laptop or desktop PC at a speed 15 times faster than before. The "wonder" is called EV-DO and will be ready for launch this month.
"This is Zapp's hottest news," said Victor Stan, the company's technology director. "The launch is a matter of weeks or even days." Zapp is the second mobile telephony operator in Europe to launch EV-DO, after Czech Eurotel company.
The EV-DO users will be able to access the Internet via a modem at speeds of up to 2.4 Mbps for downloads and of up to 153 kbps for uploads. The modem connects to the PC or laptop via the USB port, which is built in for the vast majority of models. The new technology will be possible to use anywhere in Zapp's service area right from the launch date, as explained by Zapp's officials.
EV-DO is the lowest-cost technology that also has the widest coverage in the entire wireless industry, Victor Stan says. EV-DO is based on the IP protocol, like the communications via the Internet. "This is the only IP-based wireless technology that can be installed countrywide," Stan added.
He also said EV-DO can sustain additional services such as voice-over-IP (telephony via the Internet), MobileTV (digital television sent to a mobile phone or device) or push-to-talk (a technology that allows using the mobile phone as a walkie-talkie to discuss with several people at one time).
The benefits of the new technology include the large coverage area per communications cell, which reaches up to 2km in cities and up to 100km in open space, as well as the high download speed, according to Victor Stan.
The company officials could not provide details about tariffs and subscription. In addition to those there is also the price of the modem, which the subscriber will have to buy. All the details about tariffs would be revealed upon launch of the service, said Mihaela Lupu, Zapp's corporate communications manager.
mihai.musatoiu@zf.ro
