LONDON-Vodafone Group plc launched its commercial UMTS service in Europe offering customers data rates of up to 384 kilobits per second across its networks in major cities in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The service will initially be available using the Vodafone Mobile Connect 3G/GPRS data card, which the carrier said it would launch in the United Kingdom beginning Feb. 16 and spread across its European footprint over the next four weeks. Vodafone noted the card automatically switches between the carrier’s GPRS network and the higher-speed UMTS network.
Vodafone’s chief marketing officer Peter Bamford said the carrier plans to introduce additional devices and services for both business and consumer customers later this year.
