According to a story on The Register, Vodafone are due to launch the first of their HSDPA 3G data cards in the UK today.

Dubbed 3G broadband cards in Voda parlance, HSDPA cards have three times more capacity than earlier 3G versions. This means fewer 'traffic jams' for users. That is, until everyone starts downloading PDFs and videos. Also the HSDPA are up to five times faster than other 3G cards - Voda claims peak download speeds of around "1.4Mbps and upload speeds of up to 384 Kbps".

Coverage is currently limited to major urban centers, and the cost of an "unlimited" (read: 1Gb a month) plan is £45 a month (with the card costing extra, depending on which plan you sign up for), making the service not as attractive as it may sound for the truly mobile worker - given the nature of my own work, I can burn through a couple of gigabytes of data a day.

The Vodafone website doesn't list the new high-speed cards yet, but I will check with my local Vodafone stores today to see if they're available.