Sierra Wireless Aircards: what's EOL and what's new?
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Sierra Wireless, the Canadian vendor renowned for its mobile data cards in various form factors, just announced that its highly successful Sierra Wireless Aircards 850/860 will be End-of-life by the end of November, 2007 Obviously, existing customers will be supported until the end of 2009 at the least (see attachment with the official Sierra Wireless announcement). These cards, their first to support GSM, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS networks, will be replaced by the Sierra Wireless Aircards 880/880E and 881/881E.
The Sierra Wireless Aircards 880 and 880E have been designed for the European market, whilst the 881 and 881E version are meant for American users. The biggest difference between these new cards and their predecessors is that they are supporting HSPA (HSDPA and HSUPA) while they remain backwards compatible with GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS in case no HSPA network is available. This HSPA compliance allows for upload speeds of up to 2.0 Mbps and 7.2 Mbps downstream. Which is an enormous progression compared to the 1Mbps data transfer speeds enabled by the Aircard 850. With the E versions, we are now for the first time able to offer you the registered Aircard technology in the ExpressCard form factor supporting the new industry standard express card slots which you increasingly see in the new generations of laptops. The Aircard 880 and 881, however, still have the familiar PCMCIA form factor. Today, large numbers of these mobile cards are being used by laptop users worldwide who want to maintain a high-speed connection with their home office, the Internet, etc at any time and from anywhere. Apart from that, they are often incorporated into tailor-made applications in various sectors such as telemetrics. In that perspective, the external antenna connector on the card is an enormous advantage! Do you see it too? For all info regarding these and all other products distributed by Multicap, we gladly refer to our new company website!
