Amazon set a new pricing model for mobile broadband with the introduction of its Kindle Fire HD tablet, which offers LTE connectivity for $50 per year with a monthly cap of 250 MB. Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO, said the company aims to make money by selling content and products rather than in selling devices and distribution.
Amazon did not name an LTE partner for its new service, but it is using AT&T’s blue/orange 4G/LTE flame logo on its promotional material in the U.S. The custom modem supports ten different LTE bands, perhaps giving Amazon the flexibility to support multiple LTE partners internationally with the same unit.
Networking capabilities of the Kindle Fire HD:
- Dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi (MIMO) 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, or 802.11n standard with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2. Does not support peer-to-peer connections.
- 4G LTE 10 band wireless modem with HSPA+, HSDPA, and EDGE/GPRS fallback
- Amazon is using a custom-designed 4G wireless modem that it claims is only 2.2mm thin
- Amazon’s 12 month 4G data package includes 250 MB a month of 4G data, 20 GB of additional Cloud Drive storage, and $10 Amazon Appstore promotional credit, for a one-time payment of $49.99
- Amazon will offer optional 3GB and 5GB LTE data packages. (pricing not disclosed)
- Unlimited cloud storage for Amazon content Kindle Fire HD includes the Skype app pre-installed
- Kindle Fire HD will feature a new version of the Amazon Silk cloud-accelerated browser, which the company says will provide a better than 30% reduction in page load times over the previous version. The new browser leverages an updated core rendering engine and a reengineered transport layer, along with the power of Amazon Web Services
- Integrated Bluetooth
- One-click shopping tied into Amazon’s billing systems
- Integrated support for Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! and more, as well as Exchange calendar, contacts, and email