PC Makers Team With Verizon on EV-DO

In a move to corner its rival Sprint, Verizon on Monday said it had signed deals with Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo to both market its EV-DO wireless broadband service and integrate the technology into future products from the three companies.

Dell will allow its customers to purchase the Verizon Wireless V620 PC card from retail channels starting today, with plans to directly integrate the EV-DO service into notebooks beginning next year. The card will be available for $249 USD and will require a two-year agreement, which costs $59.99 USD per month with a voice plan or $79.99 USD without.

Hewlett-Packard plans to also sell the PC card starting this fall and will offer laptops with integrated capability for the high-speed wireless service early next year.

However, Lenovo has beaten both companies to the punch, launching the Thinkpad Z60m and Z60t laptop on October 11 at a price of $799 USD for the Z60m and $1,099 USD for the Z60t. Both notebooks will feature widescreen displays as well as 3 USB 2.0 ports, and S-Video, VGA and IEEE 1394 ports.

Verizon Broadband Access claims speeds of 400-700 kilobytes per second, roughly as fast as low-cost DSL services are providing. However, real world speeds according to testers have averaged roughly half of Verizon's claims, but still faster than other services.

"Mobile broadband, which recently entered the U.S. market, is rapidly becoming the 'must have' technology in an industry already accelerating its shift away from desktop computers," Rob Enderle, principal analyst, The Enderle Group said.

Sprint so far has not announced any deals with manufacturers to bundle its data service with laptop computers. Cingular in May announced that it had penned a deal with Sony to include its EDGE data service with select laptops.