The intention is to bring a modern service and large bandwidth upto 1 Gbps to users at an affordable price. Bandwidth capacity has in fact an order of magnitude of 100 times that normally available to U.S. users today. Initially it will be an experiment, which will involved up to 500,000 users.

The idea is to create an open access network, ie a network where users can choose the provider they choose. Providers will be granted access to the initiative, in a transparent manner.

Connectivity is ensured by a quad band GPRS modem which, according to the manufacturer, guarantees a higher download speed compared to similar products due to a particular link that compresses the data in order to bring down the costs of connection. Available from August to 199.99 pounds, about 240 €, or £ 159.99, about € 190 €, in the Lite version.

The telecoms firm is pushing the low cost of entry as a selling point and says it will give the USB 598 away for free to those who sign up for a two- or three-year plan. Buying the Sierra modem contract-free costs $200; data plans start from $25 per month for 500MB of casual use and scale up to $60 per month for 3GB of usage.

The device’s hardware configuration is consistent with the standard MID design, featuring an 800MHz Intel Atom Z500 processor, 512MB DDR2 RAM, up to 1GB supported, 4GB SSD and Midinux operating system, as well as Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g support. Nevertheless, the device also packs a couple of features typically found in the case of smartphones, such as a SIM card slot, hardware keypad, camera shutter button, USB port, two miniUSB ports, call buttons, power button, etc.

The SmartQ7 is powered by a 4,500mAh lithium-polymer battery that is said to last as much as 48 hours of music playback. There is an integrated stand in the highly stylized body of the SmartQ7, which also includes stereo speakers and a USB 2.0 port. Color choices will include white, pink and lime green. There is no indication of the price for the device.

The device is made to speed up home networking and streaming of high-definition videos and online gaming. NetGear claims the kit allows speeds as fast as 270Mbps and uses a home’s coaxial cable to bridge two devices and connect them to a home network. The MCAB1001 kit includes two MoCA Coax-Ethernet Adapters and is now available for purchase, priced at $229.

HSPA multi-carrier technology with MIMO is winding its way through the standardization process and  is scheduled for commercial deployment in 2010. By the end of 2009, Ericsson said it will support commercial deployment of multi-carrier technology with speeds up to 42 Mbps. The question is, when does it make sense to stop investing in HSPA and begin investing in LTE? Operators like AT&T would like to milk their HSPA networks a bit longer before jumping head first into LTE.

Here’s the technical explanation behind the data enhancements in HSPA: “Today’s commercial HSPA devices can make use of only one 5-megahertz channel at a time. The introduction of multi-carrier consumers devices will allow two or more 5-megahertz channels to be received simultaneously by one consumer. The data stream is split over the used channels in the radio base station. The first step uses the multi-carrier concept on two frequency channels on the downlink in combination with 64QAM modulation, which gives a peak downlink speed of 42 Mbps. The increase to 56 Mbps is a further step in the evolution of HSPA, using enhancements that are currently being standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) in its 3GPP Release 9 standard. The step to 56 Mbps is obtained by using multi-carrier technology in combination with multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) technology and 16QAM modulation,” Ericsson said.

The app is the company’s first significant web browser release since 2006 and is partly meant to address gaps in its feature set compared to other, newer browsers. Greater security is also a focus with a private browsing mode and a smart filter for hostile sites. The software will be available for both Windows XP and Vista and will be a core feature of Windows 7.

The release comes just as the company faces increased competition as well as a potential blow to its control of the browser market. While significantly faster and more standards-ready, IE8 is already believed to be outperformed by Apple’s Safari 4 as well as by Google’s Chrome and the upcoming Mozilla Firefox 3.5. The software is poised to gain significant traction by virtue of its inclusion with Windows 7 but may be made optional in Europe as an ongoing EU antitrust case may force a choice between browsers that lets users install an alternative without ever installing Internet Explorer.