ID Mobile Braodband

P_Cash

anyone get a sim from ID mobile,

said id give it a go as the packages seem good, €15 for 25Gs etc,

no way on earth can i get it to work in my dongle though.

ive easily done O2, Three, 48months, vodafone, meteor,

ive put the sim in, APN = Internet, Dail N0 *99#.

nothing, just will not connect

any ideas,

ive put the sim in an old mobile, it comes up as emergency calls only, but with singal bars and an R, . . i add in the APN details on the phone, but i dont get any data h/g updown arrows, like as if its not connected to data.

yet when i open the internet explorer, it says no connection and when i hit ok, up comes google or any website. .

help welcome

editorsean

Assuming it's not a faulty / inactive SIM, these are my suggestions to try:

Check the APN. Generally the SIM comes with its APN pre-configured, so when it's placed in a dongle, it uses the default APN from the SIM. So if the APN 'Internet' is not what was set when you first put the SIM in, try connecting with the original APN, assuming the default APN field wasn't blank when you first put the SIM in.

Check if data roaming is enabled. As iD Mobile piggyback's on the Three network, some devices will show that the SIM is roaming even on its main network. For example, if a Tesco Mobile SIM is placed in a dongle, data roaming must be enabled before it will connect to data on the former O2 network.

Do you have any credit loaded on the SIM? While some networks will still connect to data and just display a place-holder webpage saying you're out of data credit, I'm fairly sure others will refuse to connect to data at all until a data add-on is purchased. For example, when I had Three's Prepay broadband a few years ago, it would not connect to data until I bought a day/week/month add-on, which I had to do by SMS.

ED E

Did you make one chargeable call or text? Usually required to activate an inert sim.

editorsean

Just to update on this thread, I now have a prepay iD Mobile broadband SIM also, which I'm currently trying out for Internet access.

When I got the SIM, the Carphone Warehouse asked what package I would like, so I opted for 25GB and had to pay €15 for the first 30 days, although there was no other additional charge for the SIM. They also asked for my name and mobile #, so the SIM was ready to use upon leaving the shop.

As I was about to leave the shop, I received two text messages on my main phone saying my 25GB is now active and the second saying I'm low on credit. So it's interesting that iD Mobile sends its SMS messages to the user's phone number. A nice benefit over the other mobile providers compared to having to access the dongle/router's web GUI to check SMS messages.

The SIM itself does not have any APN preconfigured. I initially tried it in my phone (the SIM splits down to micro and nano SIM), put in 'iD Mobile' for the name and 'internet' for the APN. The Internet worked straight away. First impressions looked pretty good as my main Three SIM was painfully slow loading pages at the time in Letterkenny, whereas when I switched my phone to Sim #2 with the iD Mobile SIM, browsing was a fair bit quicker.

While using my phone on the way home, it intermittently switched between Three 3G and 4G as well as O2 Ireland 2G and 3G. Three showed up as the home network, while O2 Ireland showed up as 'Roaming'. Like my Three SIM, it had a habbit of getting stuck on O2 Ireland 2G, requiring a manual network search to get it back on to the Three network.

As for use in my Dongle, the APN configuration process was the same. When I inserted the SIM, my dongle asked me to configure the APN, so I put in 'iD Mobile' for the name, 'internet' for the APN and it connected. I also had to enable data roaming for it to connect as the dongle detects it as roaming even on its home network Three.

With my current antenna set up at home, I'm getting around 5Mbps down and 0.4Mbps up on 3G. So it's about half what I get with Meteor. Over the coming weeks, I'll see if I can tweak the antenna to improve this as I would really like to avoid signing up to any contract, as I know there's no risk of running up a bill with prepay. I also find it interesting that the same €15 only buys 1GB of data on Three's own prepay mobile broadband!

editorsean

My village has finally got 4G on Three which was an unexpected surprise. There's no Vodafone 4G in this area yet and they are generally ahead of the other two for bring 4G to an area.

So far my speed this evening on iD Mobile is pretty decent, running at least 10Mbps down and 2Mbps up despite a weak 2 bar signal with my high gain panel antenna.

The following is a speed test on TestMy at the moment:



As it's evening time, it also shows just how much Three throttles its own phone customers. The following is a comparison speed test run about 8pm - Full 4G signal with Three on my phone in the village and back at home with a 2 bar 4G signal on my dongle on iD Mobile:



Talk about timing also - I was going to order Meteor's Bill Pay broadband on Monday as I figured at this stage there's little point staying with iD Mobile if it's barely performing any better than my DSL connection. For me, I'm after the uplink as my DSL connection maxes out about 0.4Mbps (50KB/s).

editorsean

As my first 30 day period is about up, this is a quick update.

My download speed over the past week has fallen way off, currently around 4Mbps to 6Mbps on 4G going by TestMy. My uplink speed on the other hand has improved, often hitting 7Mbps. The following is a typical example from last night:



I decided I'll go another month, however, as I'm a 1.5 hour drive from the nearest Carphone Warehouse, topping up is not as simple as I thought it would be.

The only way to top-up is by buying a top-up voucher in a shop that sells call credit, there's no facility on their website, in MyiD or my online banking to buy credit. When I went to buy credit, there was a €1 surcharge as the cashier said this is charged by their system for iD Mobile credit, at least for the €30 voucher I wanted.

Then came the next challenge - How to apply the credit on to my account. The voucher said to visit idmobile.ie/topup, but the page just mentions what stores sells call credit and how to top-up on your mobile phone, not much use with a dongle! So I checked their help pages and indeed there is a FAQ page for mobile broadband top-up saying to dial 089 700 1741 from a phone and follow the instructions. That worked.

Finally, unlike other prepay broadband providers, only one bundle can be purchased per 30 day period. If the bundle runs out, they will charge 2c/MB (=€20/GB) from the credit balance until it has been 30 days since the previous bundle was purchased. I nearly got stung by this as they don't issue a low data notification and I was down to just over 300MB with my original 15GB bundle when I happened to check my remaining data balance. On the other hand, at least they're no way to run up a massive bill being prepay, but I sure would be annoyed had it wiped out the €30 I loaded to have ready for the new €30 bundle to be charged.

If the speed does not improve over the coming weeks, I'll switch to Meteor's broadband which is giving 10Mbps fairly consistently any time I tested it at home, despite only getting a 3 to 4 bar 3G signal with their network.

Update: Speed is finally back up on my end, also the fastest speed I've had on iD Mobile considering the time of evening.



Then again I've also changed my dongle with a B593. Despite not using the external antenna (I'm waiting on an adapter), it shows just how well the Huawei B593 performs with its on-board antenna placed in the same spot as where I had the panel antenna in the loft. With the dongle, it was barely usable with just its internal antenna placed in this same spot.

beanhead

Warning. When you sign-up you *may* get a pro-rata warning which does not get into any specific whatsoever therefore is non-transparent and probably contestable via the regulator or legally in any case.

This 'warning' will definitely not tell you something specific like you will only get a pro-rata amount of data, 54Gb instead of your normal 60Gb.

And you may have logged onto idmobile.ie in the following days after signing up and seen a usage bar indicating x used of 60Gb - again no mention of pro-rata. (take a note of that ID Mobile people).

All this happened to me, I twigged it when I went onto idmobile.ie and saw a bill which had not been processed for -
€27 inc VAT for my 1st month's pro-rata
€30 inc VAT for the second month's.
'Out of Bundle Data Usage' charge of €35 inc VAT for the 1.8Gb I used over the 54Gb I was assigned in my first month's bill.

So where to go from here?

They had a billing problem which meant that no D/D has been submitted, I am extremely tempted to just cut the D/D off but I think this crowd are so shady that they will credit besmirch me.

I was told by the guy on the phone (no way to complain, no way to escalate, no way to talk to a supervisor) that I need to talk to the store manager about whether my pro-rata explanation was done correctly, that will end well no doubt.

Grade-A scalping, €35 for 1.8Gb :pac:

The open mobile market says that 1Gb domestic data is worth about €1 now.
In fact you can walk into any three store and get a €10 RTG sim which will give you 60Gb data p/m until end of June I think. I did just that as a backup sim i order to not crash my limit, I know...

idmobile.ie /jokers

editorsean

That's quite sneaky with the pro rata charge, especially if they did not mention about the reduced first month data limit upfront when you ordered.

When I went with their prepay plan, it runs for 30 days from the day of purchase, so when I bought the SIM on the 20th February, it renewed on the 21st March.

As I wanted to try Three prepay for a month to see how it compares, I didn't top up when the second month was about to expire and my data was cut off on the 20th April.

What's interesting is that my usage on the morning of the 20th April is showing up as out of bundle charges in My iD Mobile even though my credit balance was zero. The data was disconnected about 2pm with a text message saying "Oops, we tried to renew your mobile broadband but there's not enough credit." So the next time I use iD Moblie, I suspect it will deduct these charges from the next top-up.

Like Three, they don't send a reminder message when the bundle is about to expire or run out. For example, I was down to 200MB left just before the day the new bundle took effect mid March as I forgot I had my phone connected to the 4G router and it started uploading video footage I had on my phone. Had my previous bundle ran out, it would have eaten away at the €30 top-up I had loaded to have it ready for the renewal. It's similar for when the second bundle ran out, i.e. there was no text message reminding me to top-up or that I'm on my 29th day, etc. like Meteor does.

Ten Pin

beanhead wrote: »

but I think this crowd are so shady that they will credit besmirch me.

AFAIK utility bills are not part of the credit rating system. That's why phone companies use debt collectors to strong arm consumers so depends whether you're prepared to play hard ball or not.
Also you can tell your bank you want any direct debit from the previous 8 weeks refunded, no questions asked, they have to grant the refund. That will of course lead to ID demanding their money, so back to hard ball....

ItHurtsWhenIP

Ten Pin wrote: »

AFAIK utility bills are not part of the credit rating system. That's why phone companies use debt collectors to strong arm consumers so depends whether you're prepared to play hard ball or not.
Also you can tell your bank you want any direct debit from the previous 8 weeks refunded, no questions asked, they have to grant the refund. That will of course lead to ID demanding their money, so back to hard ball....

You are correct. They can't ruin credit ratings. However, if you were ever to go back to them for future service, they will insist on outstanding debts be paid first.

ardnaras

hi
Using the iD sim with a Dovado/Dongle router for Internet access.Can I make fone calls from my PC
without having to remove the sim from dongle and insert in phone ??
thanks

editorsean

If that is a phone SIM (as opposed to an iD Mobile broadband SIM), you will need a router that is capable of making voice calls, such as the Huawei E5186.

As far as I'm aware of, there is no way to make calls with a phone SIM placed in a dongle as most (if not all) dongles only support data and SMS capability.

One thing you could try is place the SIM in an unused phone that has 4G support, enable USB data tethering and connect it to the Dovado's USB port to see if it can use the phone as a USB dongle. If this works, this way you could use the phone for calls, but just lack the portability like a corded telephone.

If the SIM is iD Mobile broadband, the only way to make voice calls would be with a third party VoIP service such as Skype.

ardnaras

Hi Editorsean yes its the DATA/phone sim rather than Broadband only and also here in the Edenderry area its 3g.. no 4g coverage so i cant have data and audio at the same time,
Thanks for the info on the modem i use an old Dovado Tiny so might need to upgrade The USB tethering idea is a good one is a good one i will try that out and see how it goes Thanks for all the help

ardnaras

Hi Editorsean Connecting the fone direct to the tiny router did not work..It will not 'see' it as a dongle all though the new Tiny AC has a hotspot feature, I did manage to connect my netgear router to the fone hotspot as follows

My Netgear n900 WNDR4500 (V1 or V2) is flashed with DD-WRT and most routers can be flashed with this Linux OS and firmware here is the set up I followed remember to preform a 30-30-30 reset on your router... This setup worked with an Huwaei Android 4,2 fone It is from the WRT wiki

Connect to your router (192.168.1.1) and reset the user and password (you should be asked, if not do another hard reset)
log in
Go to “Wireless->Wireless Security” enable,
set security mode “WPA2 Personal”
select the WPA algorithm to match your hotspot in my case “TKIP+AES” and enter the password the corresponds to your hotspot
save & apply
Go to “Wireles->Basic Settings”
set wireless mode: Client Bridge
set the SSID to match your hotspot exactly
save & apply
On your phone you should see your WRT54G connection on your phone
Go to “Security->Firewall”
disable SPI Firewall
Uncheck “Block Anonymous WAN request, Filter IDENT”
save & apply
Go to “Setup->Advance Routing”
change “Operating Mode” to “Router”
save & apply
Go to “Setup->Basic Setup”
set your Local DNS to a well known DNS server like Google’s 8.8.8.8
That should be it, you should now be able to connect to the Internet via any port on WRT54G

Note: that any machine that uses DHCP that is connected to your router will get a bridged network IP and will not be able to administer the router. To administer the router manually set your IP to 192.168.1.131 and you will be able to connect to the web administration consol

Hppe this helps with connecting a hotspot

Gritty

Can anyone help, please?

I bought an unlocked Huawei dongle E5573. From Amazon.
It works with Vodafone, Eir/Meteor and Three sims but cannot get it to work with my Id data sim