Verizon Wireless to do global 3G roaming with Vodafone

Verizon Wireless is capitalizing on its links with the old country, launching a new 3G data card service with Vodafone, the multinational GSM carrier that jointly owns the U.S. operator with Verizon Communications.

Verizon Wireless and Vodafone have long been looking for ways to more closely link their networks, as Verizon Wireless, while being the largest operator in the Vodafone footprint, has always been the most isolated. Aside from the launch of a global roaming phone launched last year, little has come of those efforts due to the disparity between the Vodafone’s global GSM networks and Verizon’s CDMA systems and the frequency differences between U.S. spectrum and global GSM bands.

The new data card service, however, will give Verizon Wireless Broadband Access 3G customers access to Vodafone’s extensive UMTS and GPRS networks in Western Europe as well as access the carrier’s global roaming agreements. The service, called Global Access is far from seamless though. The demand for integrated EV-DO/UMTS cards is rather low, meaning the service will be provided over separate CMDA and Wideband CDMA data cards, both of which the customer must purchase.

It isn’t cheap either. At $130 a month, it is more than double the cost of Verizon’s domestic 3G data card service, the price of which the operator dropped from $80 to $60 a month this summer. And while the service gives customers unlimited data usage on U.S. EV-DO and CDMA 1X networks, it comes with only 100 MB of usage on Vodafone’s UMTS and GPRS networks in the U.K. France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, the Netherlands and Greece. To roam over Vodafone’s global roaming footprint covering 50 additional countries in Asia, the Middle East, South America and Africa, customers have to pay an additional 3 cents a kb.

In other news, Verizon Wireless said today it has secured a court order to stop a Tennessee company from access its customer’s mobile phone records without that customer’s permission. The company Source Resources had advertised on its website that it could track down customer billing records for a fee. Verizon officials said they settled with the company for an undisclosed amount and received a permanent injunction against the company to stop the practice. Verizon did not reveal how Source was acquiring the records.