Lenovo is laying out a lot of formidable cards at the 2016 Mobile World Congress, but what stood out is not a smartphone, a tablet or PC but an affordable communication service that lets users go online without a SIM card in China and EMEA, reducing the usual roaming costs of travelers, too.
Lenovo Connect takes advantage of the built-in connectivity of select Lenovo devices, eliminating the need of purchasing a local SIM to access the Internet in a different country or high bills to take care of when they go back home. With the service, users will be charged at the local rates of the country they're in.
Lenovo has been a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) for quite some time now, as it has about 11 million users across the globe. The company will use cellular services of others to provide mobile broadband service to even more users.
"With the dawn of 5G and the Internet of Things, we expect to see the telecom market expand exponentially. Lenovo Connect and our MVNO services will help move us into the new, globally connected world by creating a seamless smart connection across networks, services and devices," Wang Shuai, VP of Lenovo, says.
With the goal of becoming a global roaming service, Lenovo intends to eventually offer Connect across other countries, but as mentioned earlier, it's going to start in China and EMEA first.
Lenovo Connect will be available in China sometime this month on the LeMeng X3 smartphone and MIIX 700 tablet. On the other hand, it'll be available in 45 countries in EMEA at the first quarter of 2016 for certain ThinkPad laptops.
As of right now, there are no details about when the service will roll out in the United States or other countries, for that matter. It's a safe bet that more companies will work on this technology moving forward, as it'll be more than handy for travelers and businesspeople who need to go to other countries for work.
At any rate, this appears to be a great step toward a connected world.
In other Lenovo-related news, the Lemon 3 Plus is expected to make an appearance at the MWC 2016, sporting a Snapdragon 616 and 3 GB worth of RAM.
