Hi all,

Just wanted to let everyone know that I signed up to the Optus Wireless Broadband with the Roamer USB - there's a special offer at the moment (until 12th Feb) that gives you 5gig for $49.99 per month unbundled.

3 have a similar offer but theirs is 2gig not 5gig, and they don't have the coverage Optus do (the good thing about Optus is if you roam onto their GSM network the GPRS is covered in the cap, where 3 charge you as you're actually roaming on Telstra). Vodafone are actually offering a very similar pack right now, but I have always found Vodafone's coverage to be slightly lacking in comparison to Optus and eck! Telstra.

Mac Support:
Now Optus don't support the Mac officially, but I've put a guide together on how to set it up and get the drivers running here.

Quick tip - and do it before they close the loophole... If you aren't a current Optus user (ie home phone, broadband or mobile) and want to save some money, get a $5 per month phone SIM card first, then apply for the Optus Wireless Broadband - when bundled the Broadband drops to $39.99 per month, so with the $5 extra for the phone SIM card you've just saved yourself $5

ie:
Unbundled: $49.99
Bundled with $5 SIM card, $39.99 + $5 = $44.99

That's $120 saved over the 24 month contract

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Shane.

will the driver on you page only work with intel mac's?

Yeah - but I can track down the PPC driver and post it if you'd like. I just can't test it.

Regards,
Shane.

Really? I quite clearly remember someone from Optus declaring that Optus supports Mac all the way back to OS9. This announcement was hot on the heels of iiNet's announcement of support for OS X only... can't find the reference at hand but its out there.

Here we go... all fixed broadband products... what a joke.

http://mactalk.com.au/forums/showthread.php?t=36288

Oh and I don't have the link on me, but if you can't get Shane's one to work, Whirlpool has a guide too.

LINK: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...s.cfm?t=887635

There is a driver out there for the PPC - I have it working on a G4 Mini running 10.4.11.
Works well!

I've just posted up some PPC drivers as well. Easier install as they are non-beta.

If you don't have it I highly recommend grabbing the CheetahWatch app as well - really nice addition that helps use the E220 modem and tie the solution into the OS more.

Regards,
Shane.

cheers mate, i'll give it a go.
we have some of these modems hanging round work.

[quote=thorevenge;440481]Really? I quite clearly remember someone from Optus declaring that Optus supports Mac all the way back to OS9. This announcement was hot on the heels of iiNet's announcement of support for OS X only... can't find the reference at hand but its out there.

Here we go... all fixed broadband products... what a joke.

http://mactalk.com.au/forums/showthread.php?t=36288

It was me. And they don't / can't support Leopard for some reason? I put a post in the Internet section seeing if I could get some advice on how to install with Leopard. It's craziness but the same thing happened when Vista launched.

This is actually quite interesting. I am sure I heard someone tell a customer that Mac's aren't supported for wireless the other day in a Optus World Store....

they try, and have been seeing what they can do, with supporting macs, i heard they were ordering some.

i know virgins product has mac support, they have a mb, a mbp and some imacs in their tech support room.

*i get them visiting my desk when they have issues, im in optus mobile engineering, and about the only one in the place with a mac laptop.

if anyone gets stuck, or, wants to try a development driver, ill see what I can do.

additionallhy,

http://www.optuszoo.com.au/downloads/connect/

this has the most recent mac drivers (commercial release).

both vendors, option and hewuai took a lot of time to offer vista drivers, months..

option drivers were built into 10.5, hewuai were out with drivers in around a week.

Thanks for the guide... seems I could only get it to work when I used the official drivers from Huawei's official website.

I signed up to Optus Wireless today... their 5GB for $39.99 deal finished yesterday... so I signed up to their 2GB for $34.99 plan, called up the call centre after I left... they put me on 7GB for $39.99!

I think that plan will turn up on the Optus website in the next week or so.

Was that a bundled plan? I just signed up with Vodafone on Friday (5gb for $39 month, 24months) as I thought the Optus deal was bundled...

Yes, it's bundled.

is anyone having problems with optus wireless, ive been on it for a month and a half now goin onto my nxt month and its playing up on me ive got the optus inzone modem and when i ring them they dont even support the wireless part of the moden and mac they have got no idea ive been trying myself for the last week to get it going again i think i have now hopefully, im using the airport extreem base station connected to the moden to enhance the wireless signal from the optus moden insteat of connecting it using the ethanet cable, well when your running a mac book and a imac it makes sense so yea if any one can give me sum feed back with their problems and solutions it will be help full im and thinking of writeing to optus about this problem macs are becoming more popular each day and need of supports is needed

Shane,

I can get it set up and see the modem but get a 'No carrier detected' error when trying to test the connection. We have this modem on loan from Optus for a week but I'm going away on the weekend and would like to compare it to the Telstra Express34 card I have also.

Any idea whether the problem would be this end or something they're done with their test setup (it does have a sim which I assume they're configured correctly)

cheers

/k