Vodafone and T-Mobile Germany Plans:Alot Like Clearwire

In some ways, Vodafone and T-Mobile are planning on attacking the 4G consumer in much the same way Clearwire did in the United States. Both firms will start in rural areas before tackling metro markets, and both are focusing on dongle sales for connecting PCs, rather than voice services.

Vodafone plans to offer a Samsung dongle with tiered monthly plans costing between 42.50 and 72.50 EUR. The top rate provides users with up to 30 GBytes of data and peak download speeds of up to 50 Mbps. That’s starting with the small city of Rammenau, east of Dresden, where Vodafone hopes to get subscribers who still can’t get fast broadband access at home.

Moreover, the plan is to initially cover several hundred towns in rural areas and then expand the network to 1,500 locations by next spring.

T-Mobile has a similar strategy. It is aiming at rural users first and then expand to cities. The T-Mobile offer will be called Call & Surf via Funk and will start selling from next April. For 39.95 EUR per month, users get a fixed-line access alongside the LTE connection.

In all three cases--Clearwire, Vodafone and T-Mobile--4G is seen as a product competing with fixed-line broadband for PCs, not a product competing for mobile or smartphone customers.

Germany: Vodafone and T-Mobile unveil LTE pricing