Fone Forum

THE PRACTICE OF unlocking handsets so that the owner can swap between mobile network operators is well established.  The INQ has managed to prove that the same thing now applies to mobile broadband dongles as well.

The last piece of the puzzle – acquiring a SIM only deal – was solved by that great leveller, Ebay.  Hence, the INQ has been able to unlock a Huawei E220 broadband dongle and utilise it with a PAYG (Pay-As-You-Go) SIM from Vodafone acquired on Ebay.

Picking Vodafone as the target network was the logical choice given that the operator supports the highest data throughput - 7.2 Mbps – in key parts of the UK.

The catch is that officially Vodafone doesn't sell just the SIM – even though it supplies them for use inside '3G-ready' notebooks from several leading notebook PC suppliers.  3 UK also doesn't sell just the SIM either.

However, these 'grey' SIMs have leaked into the open market via electronic traders operating over Ebay. But the buyer must beware.  The first SIM the INQ acquired wasn't HSDPA/3G enabled as sold.

The vendor claimed we must have installed the wrong parameters but the second SIM which arrived by post worked first time with exactly the same parameters that were first suggested to us.

The final obstacle with our 'grey' SIM was topping it up with credit without the use of a credit or debit card.  This was achieved by acquiring a standard E-Top up card from the local Vodafone store.

Incidentally, the means of unlocking the Huawei E220 without paying an unlocker for the code was previously described by the INQ here (http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/27/avoid-roaming-disasters).

And for the Brain of Britain who questioned the INQ's knowledge of unlocking zipped files - you do need extra unzipping software.

It's probably yet another bug in Vista because even renaming the file with the suffix .zip still failed to persuade Windows to recognise the file type of Huawei's update software as being zipped.

Source:-   http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/934/1031934/mobile-broadband-unlocking (http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/934/1031934/mobile-broadband-unlocking)