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frankvw
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2009
- Messages
- 140
- Reaction score
- 37
Hi, everyone,
Since the area I live in has been abandoned by Telkom (lines have been out of service for months and Telkom employees have told me and my neighbours that they will not be fixed!) I am reduced to using wireless. I am a web developer working from home so Internet access is not optional to me.
I have a Huawei E160 supplied by MTN. Their network performance has gone from worse to terrible - although the towers supply strong signals, throughput is close to zero (and not just at my house - I have had the same experience in many parts in the south of the Jo'burg area) which leads me to conclude that their network is in bad shape.
I have borrowed a Vodacom-supplied E220 from a friend, which I am now using to write this post. (I tried it with MTN, but did not manage.) However the Vodacom SIM from the E220 won't work in my MTN-supplied E160, nor will my MTN SIM work in the Vodacom E220.
Does this mean that these modems are network-locked and/or SIM locked? Elsewhere in these forums I have read about MTN using oddball SIMs in the E220 and Huawei supplying them with customized modems, but I am not at all sure that that applies in my case.
I would assume that Huawei makes standard hardware that then gets flashed with provider-specific firmware. So I am sure that this should be fixable somehow. But how?
I really want (no, need) to get rid of MTN and switch to Vodacom - MTN's performance of late has been useless, and in practice their wireless internet access is unusable to me. But I'd hate to fork out money for a new modem. I had to buy the MTN modem since I immigrated into South Africa several years ago, and I don't have an SA ID book yet, so I could not get a contract anywhere - the best I could get was a prepaid deal with MTN where I paid cash for the modem (which I therefore now own) and I don't want to have to fork out a similar amount for a similarly expensive modem again, simply for the privilege of sticking a Vodacom SIM card into it.
So how can I get my MTN supplied E160 to work with Vodacom SIMs and use Vodacom 3G instead of the horrors of MTN?
All suggestions would be appreciated!!
// FvW
Since the area I live in has been abandoned by Telkom (lines have been out of service for months and Telkom employees have told me and my neighbours that they will not be fixed!) I am reduced to using wireless. I am a web developer working from home so Internet access is not optional to me.
I have a Huawei E160 supplied by MTN. Their network performance has gone from worse to terrible - although the towers supply strong signals, throughput is close to zero (and not just at my house - I have had the same experience in many parts in the south of the Jo'burg area) which leads me to conclude that their network is in bad shape.
I have borrowed a Vodacom-supplied E220 from a friend, which I am now using to write this post. (I tried it with MTN, but did not manage.) However the Vodacom SIM from the E220 won't work in my MTN-supplied E160, nor will my MTN SIM work in the Vodacom E220.
Does this mean that these modems are network-locked and/or SIM locked? Elsewhere in these forums I have read about MTN using oddball SIMs in the E220 and Huawei supplying them with customized modems, but I am not at all sure that that applies in my case.
I would assume that Huawei makes standard hardware that then gets flashed with provider-specific firmware. So I am sure that this should be fixable somehow. But how?
I really want (no, need) to get rid of MTN and switch to Vodacom - MTN's performance of late has been useless, and in practice their wireless internet access is unusable to me. But I'd hate to fork out money for a new modem. I had to buy the MTN modem since I immigrated into South Africa several years ago, and I don't have an SA ID book yet, so I could not get a contract anywhere - the best I could get was a prepaid deal with MTN where I paid cash for the modem (which I therefore now own) and I don't want to have to fork out a similar amount for a similarly expensive modem again, simply for the privilege of sticking a Vodacom SIM card into it.
So how can I get my MTN supplied E160 to work with Vodacom SIMs and use Vodacom 3G instead of the horrors of MTN?
All suggestions would be appreciated!!
// FvW
