Howto get a Public IP on Vodafone's 3G Network in Australia

Vodafone in Australia offers a pretty good mobile data plan - 5Gb for $39.95 per month. They have recently upped the price to $49.95 p/m.

Unlike 3, vodafone doesn't offer a public IP addresses to their "mobile broadband" customers. Vodafone pitch this as a business product. I don't agree with it, but I can see how you could justify only offering a NAT'd IP address when using your handset to access the internet or maybe even as a tethered modem. Such logic can't be sustained when offering a HSDPA modem as a "mobile broadband" service. If it is mobile "broadband" then it should be similar to a fixed line broadband service.

After discovering VF only offer a handful of gateways for their data customers, I tried finding out about getting a dynamic public IP address.

To cut a long story short, after 4 calls to data support, and about the same to corporate support, I was at a dead end. Consumer data support told me that I needed to talk to Corporate data support, who wouldn't talk to me as I wasn't a corporate customer.

Eventually I gave up and called the TIO, who, as always were great. I then called the Vodafone complaints team who struggled with all the details of broadband, public IPs, gateway IPs, various service acronyms and the terms which I had agreed to.

After a few more phone calls and waits I was finally awarded my dynamic static IP address. They add something to your account to give you access to the full access APN which gives you a public IP and no port restrictions. For the record the APN is "internet", instead of the normal "vfinternet.au", but this won't work unless VF enable it for you. I some how think Vodafone award access as a prize for persistence.

I did a quick check on the vf.au site again tonight and it seems the small print is the same, so if you sign up for the service I think you have good ground for getting a public dynamic IP like I did. It will just take jumping through a few hoops.

Update: The title should have read public not static IP.