Low-cost tablet maker Datawind this week revealed plans to launch a £99 tablet in the U.K. that is bundled with a year of free Internet access.
"To get the next billion on the Internet we need to not just give these people a device but give them access," Alia Khan, vice president of U.K. operations for Datawind, told Total Telecom.
To this end, Datawind is planning to release a £99, 7-inch Android tablet in the U.K. by the end of 2012, called the Ubislate. The purchase price includes one year of free Internet access albeit over Vodafone's GPRS network in a bid to keep a lid on costs.
Khan argued that the only reason Datawind can afford to bundle Internet access is due to its patented data-compression technologies.
"Our users use a fraction of the amount of data that other devices use," Khan claimed. "Even if they [other vendors] wanted to go through the process of signing an operator relationship, and bundling on the cost of the data, they could never do it at the price we can do it at."
However, Datawind does employ other techniques to manage data consumption.
For instance, the Ubislate is marketed as having "unlimited mobile Internet" but in reality customers are restricted to 30 hours of usage per month, and are not able to stream any audio or video content via the device's preinstalled browser.
Despite its limitations, Khan believes other vendors will want to adopt the free usage model.
In fact, it has already begun.
Amazon bundles mobile network access with the price of the 3G version of its Kindle e-reader.
Datawind's business model also has similarities with that of U.S.-based mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE) Macheen. A wholesale partnership formed between the company and 3UK in December last year enables consumer electronics makers to bundle own-branded mobile Internet access with their products, acting as an operator as far as their customers are concerned.
The U.K. is not the only country that can expect cheap Internet access bundled with Datawind tablets either.
"Our partnership with Vodafone is actually a global one," Khan said, citing 16 more countries that Datawind can extend the offer into, ncluding Germany, Italy, South Africa and Turkey (see below for full list).
"Our devices use Vodafone SIM cards and run on their network, however it is purely a wholesale relationship with them," she explained.
Meanwhile, Datawind announced in October 2011 that the Indian Government had placed an order for 100,000 of its low-cost Aakash tablets for $35 per unit, for use by students. The device has a similar specification to the Ubislate but is WiFi only.
Countries included under Datawind's agreement with Vodafone: Albania, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Hungry, Ireland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Romania, South Africa, Spain, and Turkey.