No longer able to use 3 PAYG All you can eat sim in my E367

Just got up today & couldn't connect through my setup(Dongle in my router). Plugged my dongle directly into the PC & installed the dashboard software & its now telling me I can't use the sim in a mobile broadband device it must be in a phone. I currently have the sim in my HTC desire tethered & this is allowing me to type this. However, speed is under 2Mbps compared with around 9Mbps with the dongle.

Is there anyway round this? I have £15 credit pre-loaded & 12 days left on my current plan. If I paid to have the dongle unlocked would that help?

Any help greatly appreciated

When the so called 'all you can eat' plan was launched, I was one of a fairly vocal number of people complaining that all this will lead to is tens of thousands of people taking advantage of that for e.g. P2P downloads while keeping their cable connection for the more speedy interactive bits. After all, the customer has nothing to lose. Offering unlimited usage of a potentially highly contended service is madness. For the odd web page and some Twitter type stuff on phones, fair enough perhaps.

Matters here because 3G is our only broadband option. As it turned out Three had to admit that they hadn't yet found a way of stopping people doing exactly that (phone SIM in dongle). And now it seems that they have.

Well it won't even tether now so think i will get the dongle unlocked & stick a giff gaff sim in it. I live in a BB Not-Spot so mobile BB is my only real option

3G is the only broadband option we have (we can get ADSL but it's useless)

When Three died for a couple of days (something went terminally wrong with the cell) I did get by with tethering my O2 mobile (weak signal) however I found I used up my unlimited * allowance very quickly. How is a mystery since the signal wanders in and out.

There are some good Three deals on mobile internet but they all involve ludicrously long contracts which isn't something I'd entertain when using it as a static service in one location since they're not obliged to keep that one cell running anyway nor offer any specific level of contention, and we might well move within that time - which would be back to somewhere cabled - so we wouldn't need it.

We pay £25 every now and again and that tops it up with 7GB which lasts for anywhere between about three and six weeks, by comparison, the landline and a Zen ADSL service - admittedly with the extra care option - was close on fifty quid a month for a near useless narrowband service (not Zen's fault the telephone lines are very decrepit)

Since the speeds shot up with the new dongle I am using a little more data transfer a month (downloading a trial copy of Dreamweaver @ 400MB took just a bit over 10 minutes, I think) but it's still very favourably priced by comparison.

* Unlimited = 500MB

When i asked about this in the shop she told me that if this happened just pop the sim card into a three phone and it should reactivate. It dose state in the PAYG terms some were that you cant use the AYCE data on PAYG with tethering or dongles according to the person in the shop anyway apparently this will also apply to contract as well soon its worth a try with the phone if youve got one anyway .

Ash

I ended up unlocking the dongle & tried the giff gaff sim in it but no luck - not sure what setting I would need to put in. I then tried the 3 one & I'm now back online

Thanks for your thoughts & comments

" How is a mystery since the signal wanders in and out."

The high use will be a result og that fluctuating signal. The high use will be repeated attempts to download the same blocks of data repeatedly - you may have received 99% when the signal is lost, so the whole block has to be attempted again and possibly again and again ... ad infinitum.

Thus it is frequently advantageous to "give up" and try again later.

Acknowledging that your location amongst other things may be a major cause.