On Wed, 2012-04-18 at 06:24 +1000, Jobst Schmalenbach wrote:

Hi

I used to have a telstra plan with a Bigpond Ultimate modem (sierra) What can you do with it afterwards? chuck it?

Jobst

Hi Jobst, I work for Telstra as a business consultant. The Bigpond range of wireless modems have their sim cards built in, and the official line is that when the account is closed the device is useless and therefore fit only to be discarded. The Telstra Mobile Broadband (TMB) devices have replaceable sim cards in the same way as a mobile phone, and at the cancellation of a plan it remains a viable device, awaiting another Sim card and plan. That said, there were a couple of guys at work who managed to get a TMB sim card to work in a BigPond device. That was over a year ago and I was present at the time but I was not taking notes. It was during a training session, (we were not being trained to hack the device ;-) ) but a trainer from Queensland and one other in the session pulled it off in about 20 minutes, during a break. So there may be some fun ahead for you. If you are determined to do it, I could contact the trainer and see how much he remembers. My reply in that case would be off-list. Andrew Greig