On Sun, Sep 05, 2010 at 07:09:56PM +1000, Rick Phillips wrote: > I also have servers here in Oz that I have to look after and, while I > could tether my iPhone, I don't want to be swapping sim cards in that in > case I get a call from home that a server needs attention.
There might be occasions where you'll have to slip the sim into your phone anyway - some providers require that you call a number to add credit to the card. And in one instance (here in Sweden, on 3) I have been utterly unable to get the prepaid sim to work in my 3G usb dongle. It works fine in my phone, but simply refuses to connect when used in the dongle. I don't understand why, as far as I know, the device should just appear to be a phone. I've not had any problems using it with any other provider. The other thing to keep in mind is that the store staff are utterly clueless, when it comes to selling you the prepaid sims. They seem to think that there is a difference between using data on a phone and using data on a USB dongle, and often will try to sell you a more expensive data-only product, and in many cases, a combined phone/data prepaid sim will do exactly what you want, but more cheaply. Watch out for companies that advertise mobile internet, but mean "WAP". Also remember that with some of these prepaid sims, in addition to adding credit to your account, you then need to buy a block of data in advance from that credit, otherwise the rates are more expensive (be careful, you could eat through a chunk of money in a matter of minutes). And then there's a further hurdle, often you'll have to do this on webpages that are in a foreign language. I'm fortunate in that I can mostly read German and Dutch, and can get by reading Swedish/Norwegian/Danish, but I don't really know what I'll do when I get to Eastern Europe, for example. Cheers, Paul -- Paul Dwerryhouse | PGP Key ID: 0x6B91B584 Current location: Stockholm, Sweden | http://worldmobilenet.com/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
