Comments on: Optus prepaid wireless broadband may prove costly

By: John Yusevv

John Yusevv — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 06:30:10 +0000

bigpond wireless prepaid is much better than optus. yes, the prices for data are exorbitant, and customer service is crap, but it stays connected and downloads are acceptable.

By: Michael. Z.

Michael. Z. — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:32:16 +0000

I would like to go to a prepaid service since my plan expires soon and i like the financial freedom of "no plan".
Tonight i have had to re-connect after the Optus connection dropped no fewer than 50 times.
This is just catagorically getting worse on a weekly basis. Staying connected between say 5pm and 10pm requires re-connection constantly.
Between 5-7 pm i was reconnecting after every search which was well below dial up speed even though HSPDA was indicated.
At this rate, i will use 1 gig in two days just in reconnecting if on the prepaid mode of broadband wireless. Has any one else noticed this massive decline in quality?
Maybe Optus are practising to become a bank instead of providing broadband. The ratio seems right. One real MB to create 9 fictional MB's, like the "Fractional Reserve Banking" system causing havoc in our economy.
I am confused or numb.....not sure...hmm.

By: kaydo

kaydo — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:23:51 +0000

I was much wittier the last time I wrote this, but suffered the comments fate, so I’m reattempting…

I have the 3 broadband equivalent of this USB stick. I assume it’s pretty much the same aside from the SIM and UI. The plug and play is pretty grand, and genuinely works perfectly under XP and Vista. I recommend uninstalling the previous Vodafone software first as XP seems easily confused.

I use it on Vista daily and the only complaint is that Vista seems to want to reinstall the software now and again, which is nothing more than a few moments inconvenience. Odd, but not problematic.

Works fine on a mac too, though it isn’t plug and play.

It doesn’t work easily on the eee as you noted. I understand the issue here is the dual mode function of the device. Linux doesnt recognise it as a memory stick+modem. I’ve followed some instructions unsuccessfully which effectively disable one mode on the dongle, and then you should be able to detect it as a modem.

Here’s a newer and much simpler article on using the dongle with the eee. Might be more successful than my failed attempt: http://www.greenhughes.com/content/using-huawei-e169g-usb-mobile-internet-modem-eee

I’ll be checking that one out next.