As you can remember we shared that Vodafone has started a pilot project in selected cities to offer EVDO based wireless broadband services on dongle using MTS India’s network.
After completion of successful run of Vodafone NetCruise in selected cities of southern states, Vodafone goes further and launches MTS’s EVDO services under own NetCruise brand in more circles.
Currently Vodafone NetCruise is available in 15 circles in the country – Kerala, Karnataka, Andra Pradesh, Maharastra, Goa & Mumbai, Chennai & Tamilnadu, Gujarat, Rajasthan, West Bengal & Kolkata, Delhi and NCR, Bihar, Haryana, UP – East & West.
NetCruise service supports upto 3.1 Mbps downlink and upto 1.8 Mbps uplink over MTS’s EVDO network. The data card (ZTE AC2746 & others) is priced very competitively at Rs 499.
Outside EVDO coverage users can access internet over MTS 1X network which supports upto 153Kbps. Free browsing is available on Yahoo India & Wikipedia.
NetCruise is available in both prepaid & postpaid options. The plans are different in different circles. At initial state prepaid option is made available in all circles, and postpaid is available in Mumbai & will be offered to other circles soon. Check the plans for your circle - www.netcruise.in
Our Take:
If you compare tariffs of MTS MBlaze & Vodafone NetCruise you will find MBlaze tariffs are way better than NetCruise plans.
But I sense that with this new branding MTS will get more customers on its EVDO platform as Vodafone is more popular & widely accepted brand in Indian telecom and under Vodafone hood SSTLwill target corporate & enterprise subscribers with special tariff plans as per customers’ requirements.
Main competitor of MBlaze is TTSL Photon+ which has more corporate customers than any data card services.From the view of Vodafone’s investment on this agreement, Vodafone is on EVDO based wireless broadband along with its own presence in HSPA services.
They are investing on a data-ready network which has technical advantage as MTS deployed EVDO on 800 MHz band. Without 4G spectrum Vodafone can be ahead of others in this way.
