The Swedish infrastructure vendor suggests its F3307 mobile broadband module is an industry first. The High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) module is designed to offer a theoretical data rate for downloads of 7.2 Mbit/s and uploads of 2 Mbit/s.

The company says it has worked with carriers to get the module certified in 75 countries worldwide and is looking at some of the biggest operator names as potential customers.

Such pre-certifying with as many networks as possible is crucial in to the module market so that PC makers can incorporate 3G and its high data rate variants such as HSPA rapidly and cheaply. Qualcomm is already doing this with its own Gobi modules.

Ericsson suggests more than 300 million notebooks will be sold between 2009 and 2014, most of them packed with mobile broadband hardware. By 2011, more than 30 percent of those sales will be through operator channels, Ericsson believes.

Ericsson has also been collaborating with Intel Corp. to ensure the module works well with the chipmaker's forthcoming Pine Tail-M netbook processor, due in the second half of this year. The chipset is also optimized for Microsoft's latest Windows 7.

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