Vodafone and Verizon do transatlantic data deal

NEWS Users of Vodafone's popular laptop data card service will in the future be able to roam with it to the US. Although Vodafone is a 45 per cent shareholder in Verizon Wireless - thanks to its landmark purchase of AirTouch in 1999 and subsequent pairing with Bell Atlantic's several wireless operations - the largest owner of mobile networks around the world has traditionally come up against a stumbling block in the US. While it uses the GSM standard around the world, in the US Verizon Wireless is a committed user of competing CDMA technology. The new laptop card will work using GPRS on GSM networks as well as CDMA 1xRTT data technology in the US. Roaming in the US has never been easy for many European mobile users, though of late T-Mobile - whose parent Deutsche Telekom controversially bought US GSM operator Voicestream in 2001 - has been making a noise about its European subscribers being able to roam using GPRS data services across the Atlantic. silicon.com also recently uncovered anomalies in GPRS roaming prices for UK users abroad.