£180 webpad comes with free mobile access

A new £179.99 handheld webpad comes with accelerated GPRS surfing for 20 hours a month free for the first year. Unlimited access will cost £5.99 a month.

Basic usage of the Pocketsurfer 2 will cost £40 for the second year - but its Canadian developer Datawind say they hope to eliminate all charges by gaining revenues from advertising and click-throughs.

Datawind has established itself as a virtual mobile operator, buying GPRS airtime in bulk, so that (unlike the iPhone) but so not have to sign up to lengthy operator contracts.

Datawind claims the Pocketsurfer 2 is the faster mobile internet device on the market thanks to compression that can speed up downloads by a factor of up to 30.
The technology is similar that to OnSpeed, the internet acceleration company; the Opera browser also supports acceleration.

Suneet Tuli, Datawind chief executive, said at the London launch last night that current handhelds do not provide acceptable internet access, either because they are too small or because they rely on unreliable Wifi access.

"Wifi has never lived up to its promise of providing free access anywhere," he said. "There are either no hotspots around or you have to pay." The device will be available early next month through Widget

For pictures, more details and first impressions see our Test Bed blog .