It’s been a horrible week working with a 3G dongle from Vodafone UK, because we have very bad coverage at home, and it had a 10% UMTS signal at best (at worst, back to GPRS!).
Finally Virgin folks managed to enable my broadband connection, with a new shitty cable modem with WiFi access point integrated (it can filter by MAC address in a kind of parental control, because by default it trusts every device and you have to list the blocked ones). For some reason the good old Cisco cable modem I was using in Exeter doesn’t work in Virgin’s network in Reading (too bad, I don’t like that Netgear crap).
The Thames, crossing Reading
But that was Thursday evening, and before that the 3G dongle stopped working (I think it was because we used all the 3GB transfer), so I had to top it up with £15 to get it working for another month (and 3GB transfer).
The USB dongle has a SIM card on it, like any mobile phone, and it has an associated number. So I though I could go to any Vodafone shop and ask for a regular top up; but it isn’t that easy.
The problem is you don’t know the number associated to the SIM card if you don’t install the Windows application provided by Vodafone. With that dashboard application you can top up and check different things that aren’t supported in Linux yet.
I got my top up voucher, but because I didn’t have the phone number, finally I had to install the Windows application to enable the 3G again using the voucher code.
I don’t understand why they don’t put the phone number in the box or in receipt when you buy the dongle, so you can do a regular top up without bothering with a Windows application. I have the chance to access to a Windows machine, but what would happen if I couldn’t?
I must confess the 3G dongle was very useful when we arrived to Reading and (sic) got lost because I put the wrong address in the trip plan (shame on me!), but after suffering it for a whole week plus the annoying top up process… I hope I won’t use one of those evil connections for a long while!
After the problems with Virgin’s self-installation kit when we arrived Exeter (it requires Windows or Mac OS X, although it’s a web based process), I’m very disappointed with the OSS unfriendliness of UK’s telecommunication companies so far.
