At the 2010 Mobile World Congress which took place all the way back in February, Chinese infrastructure vendor and handset maker Huawei announced the E398. It was dubbed the world’s first triple mode USB LTE modem. Many, scratch that, all the first generation LTE modems that came out only supported LTE, so if you found yourself in a part of town that lacked coverage you were pretty much screwed. The E398 supports everything, and it’s an attractive stick, but a stick none the less, making it not very exciting. Today we’re happy to say that 10 months after it was showed off it’s finally shipping. Specifications are hard to come by, but all we know is that it supports download speeds of up to 100 Mbps. Whether or not it supports HSPA+, and if so then what speed, we can’t really say. It does do EDGE/GPRS though, so even if you’re scaling a mountain or trying to use AT&T’s network, both known for difficult to access 3G internet access, you’ll still be able to do things like grab your email, albeit at a snails pace.
“Huawei is fully committed to offering both operators and end-users the full benefits in the rapidly evolving field of mobile broadband. The E398 is indicative of Huawei’s successful customer- innovation strategy to accelerate the commercialization of ultra high speed mobile broadband across the value chain,” said Victor Xu, Chief Marketing Officer of Huawei Devices. “Huawei was one of the first manufacturers in the industry to launch LTE data cards, and it is our aim to work together with operators to boost the commercial use of LTE so that consumers around the world can experience exceptional 4G internet surfing experiences.”
We’re waiting for someone to make the first portable LTE hotspot. USB modems are nice for the corporate crowd, but we’ve got Kindles, iPads, and iPod touches that we’d like to get online at stupid fast speeds with ultra low latencies. Maybe we’ll see some at CES or Mobile World Congress 2011 from Huawei’s largest competitor?