Vodafone has today announced SuperMobile, a “completely new category of mobile connectivity” that will meet the demands of generative AI products like the Meta Glasses.
SuperMobile will supposedly deliver up to 4x faster speeds than Vodafone’s standard plans, and guarantee minimum speeds of 15Mbps at all times; if your connection ever drops below 15Mbps, you’ll be able to walk away from your SuperMobile plan without paying an early termination fee.
“In a world of streaming on the go, and in a new world of generative AI that requires reliable low latency, SuperMobile is the plan that delivers superior performance,” Rob Winterschladen, Vodafone’s Consumer Director, explained at the plan’s announcement. “If you believe in the potential of AI, then you also believe in the potential of SuperMobile.”
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‘Latency’ refers to the time delay between a user’s request and a system’s response; the lower the latency, the faster the response. You need a consistent internet speed of between 25 and 50Mbps to enjoy low-latency 4K streaming and responsive online gaming, but with the rollout of SuperMobile, Vodafone is anticipating a future in which our mobile devices demand significantly more bandwidth.
As Winterschladen explained to TechRadar in an interview: “Depending on the use case, the need for low latency gets bigger and bigger. If you’re asking ChatGPT, ‘What’s the weather today?’, you don’t really need super low latency. Where it starts to become more important — and I think we’re in the embryonic phase of low-latency use cases evolving — is with video content creation, augmented reality products like the Meta Glasses; that kind of stuff. If you’re walking down the street with a pair of Meta Glasses, and you’ve got AI in real-time overlaying AR onto your view, that’s where low latency becomes more important.
“So if you believe in the potential of generative AI,” Winterschladen continued, “and we do; we see it in the data travelling over our network — as those use cases get more complicated and more demanding of low latency, that’s where SuperMobile comes in. It’s 5G+, on a slice, with super low latency, and therefore generative AI will become more responsive.”
In other words: Vodafone is future-proofing its connectivity offering against bandwidth-hungry AI platforms and wearables. Smart glasses like the Ray-Ban Meta might not be as ubiquitous as smartphones right now, but that’s where things are headed: we know that OpenAI, for instance, is developing a ChatGPT-powered wearable with former Apple designer Jony Ive, while Apple itself is reportedly designing a new form of AI-powered, camera-equipped AirPods.
Depending on the use case, the need for low latency gets bigger and bigger. If you’re asking ChatGPT, ‘What’s the weather today?’, you don’t really need super low latency. Where it starts to become more important is with video content creation and augmented reality products like the Meta Glasses.
Rob Winterschladen, Vodafone
But even if you’re not excited/frightened (delete as appropriate) by Vodafone’s bold vision of the future, its new SuperMobile plan does at least bring a more tangible benefit to the table: that fixed minimum internet speed of 15Mbps. If your plan ever drops below that speed — even once — you’ll be able to walk away for free.
This guarantee isn’t quite ‘no questions asked’, but it’s close enough: “Customers have got to be on the 5G+ network,” Winterschladen clarified to TechRadar. “And we’ve built the ability to do a speed test, so we’ll look at that speed test, and if [your SuperMobile plan] is not hitting the 15Mbps minimum, then we’ll let the customer go. Now the question is, ‘Where else are you going to go to get better performance?’ But yes, if our speed tests show the customer is getting less than 15Mbps, and they’re on 5G+, then we’ll let them go without penalty.”
Vodafone’s SuperMobile plan is available now for £3 per month more than its full-speed Xtra plans, £8 more than its SIM-only 100Mbps plans, £4 more than its handset 100Mbps plans, or as a rolling monthly add-on for £12.
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