Anyone who has tried to connect to the internet from a laptop through a mobile phone will know the frustration. For what seems like hours, the cursor spins forlornly while the status bar at the bottom of the page makes no visible progress until you eventually lose patience and decide just to phone someone in the office and ask them to read your email for you.

For too long, pathetic connection speeds have given the lie to the overworked rhetoric of the mobile communications revolution. But now Vodafone has quietly launched a new mobile internet access service which uses GPRS (general packet radio service) rather than GSM handsets to offer speeds as fast as those available through a 56K modem plugged into a landline.

Vodafone hopes the "real internet" service will provide consumers with the elusive "must-have" reason to go out and upgrade their existing mobiles to GPRS. Despite being available since the summer, GPRS handsets have failed to spark much enthusiasm, largely because of backlash from the abject failure of Wap phones to live up to the hype. UK sales of GPRS so far are believed to have barely passed the 50,000 mark.

But the Vodafone service is impressive. Even highly graphic websites such as Guardian Unlimited load quickly and without fuss. Within a few minutes, you forget that you are not plugged into the wall. For those who have nightmares about setting up their laptop to run through a mobile phone, Vodafone provides a CD-Rom which does all the hard work with one click. The company has only just realised that a Mac version might also be a good idea.

Because it is an always-on service, pricing is done by the amount of data transferred rather than the length of time online. Vodafone is offering a range of packages: the standard GPRS 5 package costs £17.50 a month and includes 5MB of data - equivalent to about two hours of non-stop browsing. Additional data is charged at 35p per kilobyte. As an introductory offer, anyone who signs up for the GPRS 5 plan before the end of January will get their first month's line rental free.