3g

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.

Or another reason why I am glad that I don't use 3 anymore.

I should have posted this some time ago, but forgot and so it has been sitting in my Drivel drafts folder for a bit.

You might want to try these instructions under windows too, if you get a dud unlock. Just use another terminal emulator instead of minicom.

Skip the history and read how to unlock it

I recently switched from 3 mobile to virgin for my UMTS data. I already had a Novatel Merlin U530 card from three. The card isn't fantastic but it works pretty well at upto 384/64Kbps which is good enough for mail and feed reading (my main 2 activities on the train) or ssh.

When trying to get the card unlocked, 3 was less than helpful initially, which is pretty normal for them. Initially the operator told me that my card could not be unlocked, when I asked why I was told it was in my contract. When I read the contract I had signed to the operator I was put on hold. She came back and told me that it couldn't be unlocked, I told her it could as I had read online that it could. Then I hear in the background "just keep telling him it can't be unlocked". When I asked to speak to the person in the background telling her what to say she told me that there was no one telling her what to say. I told her I could hear the guy and that I wanted to either speak to the person or get their name so it could be included in a report to the TIO. I was again put on hold. About 1 minute later I was told that I would be transferred to data services.

After spending a little while on hold I got to speak to someone in data services. First they wanted to know why I wanted my card unlocked, I explained I could get a better deal elsewhere, to which the response was that I could talk to sales to see if there were any new offers available - I declined. Next I had to play 20 questions to make sure I was the account holder and that I was out of contract. After reading the IMEI code off the bottom of the card I was given the unlock code and told that I would be emailed the software - a zip file containing some Windows only application.

I had my content filtering too high so amavis bounced the message the first time. When I rung 3 back, at first 3 told me that I need to talk to my ISP as it was very strange that the message was bounced, I told them I would just use another account - my gmail account. The guy then told me that gmail bounces their messages, so we used my hotmail account.

So now I had the software, so I tried using XP under qemu to talk to the card for the unlocking, no luck. A few days later I borrowed a XP laptop from a friend. By now I had misplaced the unlock code. Back on the 3 merri go round, this time data services was happy to hand over the code. The operator waited on hold while I unlocked the card. I started the application, inserted the card, plugged in the unlock code and got the message confirming that the card was unlocked.

Later that day I tried using a vodafone SIM, no go. Another vodafone SIM no go. My Virgin SIM didn't work either. I tried using the unlock software which kept on erroring.

I thought going to a 3 store might get it fixed quickly. Basically I was told that as the card was out of warranty and I wasn't using a 3 SIM they wouldn't provide any support. The best I could do was pay for a firmware reload from a non authorised service centre.

Back to the 3 call centre merry-go-round. I explained that I was extremely close to lodging a TIO or Consumer Affairs complaint as the card useless and not working as advertised. I spoke to a helpful operator who told me he would escalate the job.

Over the weekend I spent a fair bit of time searching for answers. Eventually I ended up finding a list of AT+C modem commands. In the list was

AT+CLCK

which is for facility lock. I played with it a bit and found that network personalisation was still active, but no other locks were on. This seemed strange to me. I figured this is where my problem was.

This is how I unlocked my card. You must have a 3 (or locking carrier SIM inserted in the card while attempting this.

I connected to the card using minicom by running the following in a terminal (I didn't need to be root).

minicom /dev/ttyS2

Minicom should then load and output something similar to

Welcome to minicom 2.2

OPTIONS: I18n 
Compiled on Mar  7 2007, 15:10:03.
Port /dev/ttyS2

               Press CTRL-A Z for help on special keys
                                                     
AT S7=45 S0=0 L1 V1 X4 &c1 E1 Q0                     
OK                                                         

I then entered

AT+CLCK=?

which should return

+CLCK: ("AB","AC","AG","AI","AO","IR","OI","OX","PN","SC")

OK

This is a list of locks available on the card.

Enter the following

AT+CLCK="PN",2

Which means, for network personalisation (PN), query the status (2), which should output

+CLCK: 1

OK

The 1 indicates locked.

You will need your unlock code from your carrier - I do not know how to get it other than via your carrier. This is not a "how to unlock your card with the unlock code" howto. So replace <CODE> with your unlock code.

AT+CLCK="PN",0,<CODE>

The 0 is for unlock. If it works should get OK or something, I forget exactly the response, but ERROR means it failed.

Now your card is unlocked and should work with any carrier.

Use [ctrl] x to quit minicom.

Enjoy!

If you need the settings details for using a Merlin U530 with Virgin Mobile in Australia under Linux try the following

For a bit over a year I have had a Novatel Merlin U530 data card from 3 mobile. When my contract expired I started to look at churning. At first 3 insisted the card was network locked and couldn't be unlocked, "as stated in your contract". I read them what I had signed and mentioned the TIO, before the supervisor I had heard whispering in the background took the call and sorted out the unlocking.

3's service is good, if you are within the "broadband zone" (read within 35kms of an east coast capital city). The downsides of 3 are that once out of their coverage area, you roam on the Telstra GPRS network (and pay for every Kb on top of the monthly plan fee), and when you need customer service, you wait 20mins to talk to someone in India on a crappy VoIP connection. If the coverage was better and the N95 wasn't still "coming soon", I may have considered their X Series product.

I considered Vodafone, who I use for my phone, but I am not very impressed with VF. The phone I got under contract is a dud. VF keep on calling me to tell me I'm a valued customer and making sure I am happy with the service, but every issue I raise isn't something the person on the other end of the phone can deal with. After my last experience with VF's data services, I am still wary of them. Vodafone's pricing wasn't that great either.

Telstra required a long contract for a poorly priced product. Although their coverage is good, they use a non standard frequency, making my current data card useless. I also try to avoid using Telstra, due to their anti competetive attitude.

Optus uses the same 3G network as Vodafone, so they were appealing. The downside with Optus was price. Their "youth market" subsidiary Virgin Mobile has just released a 3G product with a great price (by Australian standards). With Virgin I get 1G of data per month for 30AUD (including 50AUD worth of calls). The Optus 3G network is still being expanded but is pretty good. In the country Optus'/Virgin's GPRS coverage is pretty good too - at least where I travel to. Although I am limited to 384/64Kbps, I am not locked into any contract.

The only downside with Virgin is the excess data charges - 20AUD per Mb. As I generally average a lot less than 1G p/m, this shouldn't be a problem. Streaming radio on the train should now be an option while checking my emails.