In a presumed effort to shake up the Japanese wireless industry and provide consumers with 3G-equipped PCs that aren't tied to multi-year contracts, Hewlett-Packard has quietly announced a deal with Japan Communications that will allow its machines to be sold with SIM cards that can be used on a pay-as-you-go basis. For those unaware,
JCI leases network space from NTT DoCoMo, and as part of the agreement, HP will not only get to choose which devices can connect, but it'll get to keep a nice slice of the mobile data revenue as well. Here's the crazy part: the initial wave of netbooks will be sold for between $50 and $100 sans contract. That's about what
users pay in America now for
subsidized WWAN-ready netbooks, but there's a two-year contract tagging along. If all goes well, we could even see full-sized laptops, smartphones and digital cameras hop on the same bandwagon, but for now, we'll be keenly watching how brisk sales are when things kick off next month.
posted August 11th 2009 6:48AM
"wave of netbooks will be sold for between $50 and $100 sans contract."
Such a scheme will never reach Treasure Island...
In U.S. America contract frees you!
Either way I hope you do realize they will demand twenty different forms of ID if you were to go attempt to buy one.
Over in Japan, unlike the US, there are laws against misuse of phones for criminal purposes (ie buying a prepaid phone for drug dealing etc) and require several forms of ID even for a very very basic prepaid phone.
With no contract at all? Sounds crazy. If you buy it and never use the WWAN, won't they be losing money?
That is what I said to myself. This is koo koo!
wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!
Right now, in Japan, the contract-ridden 3G netbooks are subsidized by about $300 down to a sticker price of ~$100, so if the article is for real then it would be a huge thing. I really want 3G for my netbook, but not for $60/month/2 years. So far there is no pay-as-you-go plans here for wireless data that I know of.
I think last time when I walk into Yodobashi, there are selling a 1 Yen Aspire One on contract.
I think what HP will probably do will be charging full price for the Netbook and throw in a store value card with the same price (i.e. for 350 USD with 300 USD stored value)
Japanese mobile company are not charging cheap either ... 399 USD for 150 hr with USB thumb or 318 USD for 130 hr ....
http://www.bmobile.ne.jp/personal/3g/index.html
Let's wait and see
Damn this news. I'm in the market for a netbook and was planning on buying one this weekend. Now I'm gonna have to wait til next month to see if this deal is as good as it sounds. :D
e-mobile, starts at 580yen - max 4980yen/month on a 2 year contract, a pretty good deal.
http://emobile.jp/charge/superlightdataplan.html
emobile down side is you have to use a usb / pc card dongle :(
'cause they opperate on 1700MHz - even if you unlock the internal modem in your PC you can not use it, no modem PCI cards use it
Don't forget the the added cost of the subsidised netbook in there. The discount you get isn't really free.
I installed the 'win7 x86 RTM' on my ASUS 1005ha (pre loaded with XP) and I had absolutely no driver issues, no problems at all in fact with the clean install.
The one thing I noticed is my battery life has been cut by about 30 minutes. i still have yet to install the eee-pc (asus included software) that has some utilities that manage battery life,etc...so it's still possible that I can get that lost battery life back...
sorry wrong article.... and there is no way to delete posts...
If I can use my home wifi w/out paying any extra fees, I'll buy 2!