Today, mobile carrier Vodafone did a little jig and made a song and dance about how we should all ditch our landlines because finally it has brought us affordable mobile internet with its Vodafone Mobile Connect (VMC) product.  However, you would be crazy to ditch your landline for this product.

In fact, Vodafone, by slashing its mobile data usage fee from $150 to $49.95 a month flat with unlimited downloads, (plus $399 for the hardware), has indeed delivered an affordable product for those who wish to take their laptops on the road and stay connected.

The problem with VMC is not price but performance. There's no getting around the fact that VMC is carried on Vodafone's GPRS network. What that means of course is that what you get for your $50 a month plus $399 set up cost is a mobile internet service with limited bandwidth roughly equivalent to a dial-up line. Vodafone admits to download speeds of about 50kbps and upload speeds of "slightly less". Thus, for a price equivalent to that of a broadband connection, Vodafone will give you a mobile connection with dial-up performance.

That said, for many users, having a ubiquitous albeit slow internet connection for a flat monthly fee, will appeal. Although, wireless hot spots are becoming more prevalent, there is no doubt that having the facility to be online virtually anywhere, at any time, is a useful asset. For some, especially business travellers, that may well be worth $50 a month plus the upfront cost. However, most of us won't be ditching our broadband landlines anytime soon.

Oh by the way. Those of you who are using the free VoIP product Skype (which I will review in due course), may also be able to make free phone calls or cheap timed calls over VMC. However, the caveat is that the performance of the GPRS network may not be sufficient to enable this. We'll let you know in due course.