MiFi – WiFi that goes with you

Benjamin Ellis — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:39:25 +0000

There’s a gadget that has had our interest for a little while now. The first encounter was in St James’ Park, where this wallet sized device was enabling the real-time uploading of photos in the middle of a picnic. Vodafone has now launched the Novatel Wireless Intelligent Mobile Hotspot 2352 – or MiFi to its friends – available on a data package from now.

Best described as a Mobile Broadband Hotspot, the MiFi acts as an 802.11 (WiFi) access point for up to five devices, which it then connects to the Internet via a mobile data connection – the MiFi has a SIM card tucked away in the battery compartment. In our trials, the device lasts up to 4 hours on a single charge, which is reasonably impressive for an access point. It is small and light (it tucks easily into a pocket in a jacket or a bag). Switch on, then fire up your laptop/iPod Touch/WiFi device of choice and surf the net anywhere up to 10 metres away from where the MiFi has been put down.

The MiFi supports a reasonable selection of 802.11 security features, to limit its use to selected devices, where that is a requirement. It also supports a MicroSD card (which can be up to 16GB), enabling local file sharing via a web interface. A very nice additional feature that boosts its usefulness on the road. The connection speeds (via the mobile network ) are up to 5.7 Mbps on the uplink and 7.2 Mbps on the downlink, which puts it firmly in the broadband space, with very attractive upload speeds too.

Initially the MiFi is available from Vodafone in Germany, Romania and Spain. The device seems a good fit for:

Mobile teams – enabling collaboration and share data access.
Road warriors with more than one device requiring mobile data access.
Small group meetings in venues without WiFi.
Telemetry/mobile monitoring with WiFi enabled sensors.
Backup connectivity for small offices that are WiFi/DSL based.

BusinessTechFeed » Vodafone

MiFi – WiFi that goes with you

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