Nothing beats mobile broadband on your laptop. While yes the size of the iPhone is nice, sometimes you need a full computer to do some of those more intensive tasks. Virgin Mobile is set out to make that a lot easier.
The carrier will begin selling a USB dongle produced by Novatel Wireless later this month for $149.99, but the best part about it is there’s no monthly fee or contract. Users will buy refill cards for the service much like they do for a prepaid phone.
Instead of minutes, the prepaid cards would be sold in denominations of megabytes. The cheapest card would be 100MB for $10, although it would also expire in 10 days.
All the rest of the denominations would expire within 30 days, and include a 250MB card for $20, a 600MB card for $40, and a 1GB card for $60. While yes, you can get 5GB of data for $60 through other carriers, you have that pesky contract to worry about.
Virgin’s broadband plan seems to make sense for occassional users. I would venture to guess there could be a potentially large untapped market here. Really, mobile broadband only makes sense for business right now due to its prohibitive price.
Some seem to be complaining over the short expiration periods. While I tend to agree, at the same time I see Virgin’s desire to attempt to make this as stready of a revenue stream as possible.
Either way, it’s a start, no?
Mobile publishers and carriers will now be able to cash in on Google’s moves into mobile advertising through a new program launched by the search giant on Tuesday. Called AdSense for Mobile Search, it would allow developers to easily integrate Google search into their applications.