Novatel revs up its line with new HSDPA / HSUPA offerings

By Paul Miller | February 15, 2007

Novatel’s keeping us in the bits pretty well lately, what with those Rev A dongles on Sprint and Verizon, and that XU870 HSDPA ExpressCard hotness. Now they’ve got a trio of hot new accessories, including a pair of HSDPA devices: the Merlin X950D ExpressCard and the Ovation MC870D USB Modem. The X950D offers up global tri-band HSUPA and quad-band EDGE/GPRS, and works in ExpressCard/34 and 54 slots. The real hotness is the 2.1Mbps HSUPA uploads, and those 7.2Mbps downloads aren’t bad neither. There’s also built-in GPS. On the USB end of things, Novatel’s Ovation MC870D (pictured) does 7.2Mbps HSDPA, but apparently doesn’t match those hot upload speeds in the X950D. The dongle is Europe centric, hanging out on the 2100MHz band, so Americans will have to look elsewhere. Novatel is also announcing two HSDPA embedded laptop modules for OEMs, the EU870D for Europe and the EU860D for North America. Luckily for those of us wondering where North American USB HSDPA is on this list, Novatel is launching the Merlin XUA-1 ExpressCard to USB adapter, to let you use those cards with any old USB 2.0 port. No word on price or release dates for any of this stuff, but this should be enough to get us salivating, we suppose.