Using Huawei E220 USB modem on another network?

[Feline]

Have acquired a new Lenovo laptop - and what I thought was a PCMCIA slot turns out to be PC Express card slot - so my Huawei E620 won't fit and won't work! Nah!

I have acquired a Vodacom E220 which I want to use on MTN. I understand that these modems are not network locked - so is it as simple as downloading and installing the F@stlink update from the MTN site?

Could it be that simple? Could it?

 

[Juggy]

Have acquired a new Lenovo laptop - and what I thought was a PCMCIA slot turns out to be PC Express card slot - so my Huawei E620 won't fit and won't work! Nah!

I have acquired a Vodacom E220 which I want to use on MTN. I understand that these modems are not network locked - so is it as simple as downloading and installing the F@stlink update from the MTN site?

Could it be that simple? Could it?

Simply use the Vodacom pakage or plug it in and the software will automatically install as it's stored on a partition on the device. Just select MTN or Vodacom from the drop down list. I have one that I use on MTN and Vodacom so I can say it does work.

 

[Feline]

No Luck!

Errm - Well didn't quite work out that way ...

First - attached modem to computer and it gurgled away, showed a green light from time to time, occasionally revealed itself as drive E: and also disappeared as Drive E:

Then installed Vodacom E220 software - which doesn't actually give an option for MTN as a service provider - so I chose Vodacom and all seemed to go quite well, in that it installed a couple of Vodacom icons on my desktop, but it then tried to recognise the SIM card - and that simply never happened. The SIM card (Pay as You Go) works OK in a Nokia E60. I also tried my MTN SIM card - but it didn't recognise that either.

From time to time it does recognise the E220 as a storage device, and there seems to be some jolly useful looking software on it - but no clue as to how to use it.

Managed to locate the following Huawei generic drivers:


# E220 Client Software WINMACB300D00SP02C03 (UTPS11[1].002.03.16.03_MAC11.201.01.00.03) for WinXP&2K&Vista & Mac (8007 KB) 20-Mar-2008

# E220 Client Software UTPSB002D03SP16C03 for WinXP&2K&Vista (7115 KB) 20-Mar-2008

# E220 Client Software HOSTB107D05SP00C03 for WinXP&2K&Vista (13856 KB) 20-Mar-2008

But there is no indication of which does what (also you need to rename the downloaded files with the extension .ZIP before you can do anything with them).

A couple of clicks away on the Huawei site there is a file purporting to be the " E220 HSDPA USB Modem User Manual (931 KB) 26-Sep-2006". This downloads as an "application/octet stream" but steadfastly refuses to open with any program known to me (if opened with WordPad it does show a .PDF extenson - but renaming it as file type .PDF gets a message from Adobe Acrobat that it is either an unknown file type or corrupted).

So I have now spent a hugely frustrating eight hours and am well p1ssed orf!

Do you have any other suggestions Juggy? Or anyone else for that matter? I would prefer to use it with my MTN SIM card (for which I have a contract), but if needs be I will use it with a pay-as-you-go Vodacom SIM card - but at the moment I'm not even getting it on with Vodacom.

Regards from a non-purring feline ....

 

[Tun@]

I got a MTN 620 not the 220 but if going that way ain't working why not just install the MTN sim and download the MTN F@stlink dash instead?
Uninstall what you loaded on so far 1st tho.

Re those Hauwei files if you want to continue down that track.
Those .ZIP files will be compressed files that you need to extract 1st not just rename.
A program for doing that if your windows does'nt have here
http://www.izarc.org/index.html

The prepaid vodacom sim on your 1st attempt....its got airtime + you activated it for data?

Also from memory if the 220 is similiar to the 620 installation you need to install the software/drivers etc BEFORE plugging in,sounds like you plugged the unit in 1st maybe thats created a problem.