Telia and Symbol help business travellers get connected

NEWS Sweden's Telia has teamed up with Symbol Technologies to provide business travellers with broadband Internet and intranet access from venues such as airports, stations and hotels throughout its domestic market. Telia's HomeRun service offers registered users access at up to 2Mbps. They have to be within about 80 meters of a Symbol Spectrum 24 access point and use a provided wireless PC card. The cost is E158 (£109) per month after an initial E495 (£363) signing-on fee. Lars Karlsson, marketing manager, Telia Mobile Local Wireless Access group, defended the price. He said the bandwidth and availability would be the main advantages over upcoming technologies such as GPRS and third-generation UMTS in Europe. He said HomeRun is "for when people have time to sit down and work". John Hughes, director, Wireless Systems division of Symbol, said the company has been talking to over a dozen other operators about similar roll-outs. Co-operation between telcos to serve international travellers is the next likely development, analysts said. Financial details of the Telia-Symbol deal have not been disclosed, but hotels and others are unlikely to foot the bill for the service.