Nuu's new Konnect i1 hotspot will hook you up to the Internet in 88 countries, even over LTE—if it ever goes on sale.
The Konnect looks like it could be a great option for frequent travelers, and Nuu brought working units to the Pepcom press event here in Las Vegas. It just has one annoying twist: the company is holding public release hostage to the success of a Kickstarter campaign.
Nuu joins Skyroam and a bunch of rental hotspot providers in the busy world of international hotspots. It has a major advantage, though. While Xcom, TelecomSquare, and Skyroam work globally, they're stuck on 3G speeds in most countries even as faster LTE becomes the norm. And while My Webspot offers 4G, it only works in a limited set of European countries.
"This is brand new technology. You haven't reviewed anything like this hotspot," said Tim Clemens, SVP at Nuu.
The Konnect works in 88 countries, soon to be 108, thanks to a combination of virtual SIM and SIM-bank technology, Clemens said. The company can buy a stock of virtual SIMs from different providers for its hotspots to dynamically link and unlink to, allocating them or adding new SIMs at will, he said. That makes Nuu's technology very flexible.
The hotspot uses an LTE Class 6 Qualcomm modem and works on the T-Mobile network in the US and Rogers in Canada. It connects up to five devices to the Internet and supports VPNs and Wi-Fi calling. With LTE bands 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/17/20/39/40/41, it will work across the world.
Related
- The Best Mobile Hotspots of 2016The Best Mobile Hotspots of 2016
As for the service plan, Nuu plans to offer 500MB of LTE per day for $10. After 500MB, you're throttled down to HSPA+ for the next 500MB, and then 128kbps for any additional data that day. You may be able to buy special passes to get additional daily LTE for an extra charge, Clemens said.
The hotspot won't be offered as a rental, and Nuu didn't give a price for the hardware. "It's buy it and use it, and you can just buy whatever sayd you want," he said.
Unfortunately, you may not be able to buy this hotspot. Because Nuu is not staffed up to support consumers, it may become an enterprise-only product. It will run a Kickstarter campaign starting today to see if they get sufficient interest to support it as a consumer product. "There's back-end infrastructure and labor that's needed to manage everyone," Clemens said.