By Grant Shepherd

SYDNEY: Yesterday it was announced that Telstra and Acer have teamed up to offer a range of laptops with embedded wireless broadband, now Optus has jumped into the ring and is offering its services to Samsung netbooks.

Samsung’s new NC10 is one of the world’s lightest 10.2” netbooks, weighing just over 1.33kg and features a SuperBright Non-Gloss LED screen, Intel Atom processor, Potect-o-Edge casing, six cell battery for up to eight hours use, 160GB HDD and runs on Microsoft Windows XP Home.

“We have been looking at the netbook market for some time to see where we could really add value for consumers. This is the first time we have partnered with a telecommunications provider to further enable consumer take-up and awareness of our IT solutions,” said Emmanuele Silanesu, national product and marketing manager of Samsung Australia IT Division.

“By leveraging our existing relationship with Optus, together we have succeeded in delivering an all in one solution to meet Australian customers’ demands out of the box,"

Anthony Hearne, Optus consumer marketing director, was also optimistic about the new partnership.

“Optus customers can now purchase a complete mobile computing package with us, allowing them to take possession of a new netbook and wireless broadband service with no upfront cost,” he said.

“We’ve partnered with Samsung because they’re a market leader in consumer electronics, we wanted to ensure our customers benefited from a powerful netbook while accessing Optus’ high speed wireless broadband network.”

The Samsung NC10 is available for $0 upfront on a 24 month Optus My Wireless Netbook 2GB plan for $49.99 per month and the My Wireless Netbook 5GB plan for $69.99 per month and can be picked up at Optus dealers nationally and through Optus telesales.

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