Some of us are still clamoring for mere 1.8Mbps HSDPA -- complete with a pedestrian 384kbps on the upstream side -- to go live in our neck of the woods, but that's not stopping Vodafone from rolling deep (way deep) in Germany. Voda has gone live in Bavaria with an Option GlobeTrotter Express HSUPA card, "customized to the exacting requirements of the operator" and offered at retail as the "Mobile Connect Card Express UMTS Broadband." The ExpressCard/34 offers a Cardbus adapter in box, firmware upgradeability, download speeds as high as 7.2Mbps, and a staggering (albeit theoretical) 1.45Mbps upstream. Mobile web server, anyone?

[Via Slashphone]

Nipping at the heels of Novatel's similarly-styled XU870, Belgium's Option Wireless Technology has announced its GlobeTrotter EXPRESS 7.2. As the name implies, the ExpressCard promises 7.2Mbps downstream on the wings of your carrier's HSDPA airwaves -- if said carrier supports such blazingly fast speeds, of course, and as of right now 3.6 is as good as it gets. For what it's worth, the XU870 currently tops out at 3.6Mbps with a software upgrade to 7.2 slated for down the road, so the GlobeTrotter takes the strictly-theoretical speed crown in the meantime (and if the GlobeTrotter were actually shipping right now like the XU870 is, that'd be even cooler). Thanks to a nifty little feature Option calls "Zero CD," drivers for the card are embedded in the card itself, meaning that no separate driver installation is necessary when you shove this puppy into your lappie of choice. No word on availability yet, but with support for triband HSDPA and quadband EDGE, we wouldn't be surprised to see this one take the whole world by storm.

[Via 3G.co.uk, thanks Bram]