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This is the new and improved pocket wifi device from Vodafone. Can be unlocked at www.unlockguru.com for $8
Key Features
•3G: 850⁄900/2100 (HSPA 21.1/5.76 Mbps)
•Network: Vodafone
•Connect up to 5 WiFi- enabled devices simultaneously
•HSPA+ support - up to 21Mbps
•Completely wireless- built in high capacity battery
•Access WiFi Password directly on the screen
•Simple QuickStart Web UI
Comes with 3GB data with 30 day expiry
EDIT: Credit to Legion for pointing out this site on eBay http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/UNLOCK-CODE-Huawei-R201-R205-E583… that is offering the unlock code for approx $3 AUS and they have a very quick response time too.
Thanks to the OP and OzB participants for useful information.
Currently travelling, I bought one with the intention of ultimately using it with Telstra, as our current Optus HSPA mobile broadband service is performing more poorly as time passes. Optus seem to not increase their network capacity and many cells, even in major cities, are still not even 3G.
But in attempting to put the Vodafone data allocation that has come with Pocket WiFi to some use, it has been an opportunity to experience yet again how appallingly inadequate Vodafone is as an ISP (if any more evidence were needed). Vodafone may as well not have claimed to be in the process of a supposed $1B network upgrade (most of which is probably double-counted spending by Optus who is Vodafone's wholesale supplier and many of whose cell stations VF shares) for all the good this supposed upgrade appears to have done their network.
Currently travelling in major population centres in south-east QLD, we have experienced 48 hours of rubbish Vodafone internet data performance.
Running the Pocket WiFi's status page and frequently referring to it, mostly the data is trickling in at between 0 - 10 kilobits (not bytes) per second, whether on Edge, 3G, or HSPA (it makes no difference to the observed data speed). The very highest burst of download speed so far observed is 100 kilobits per second - no higher. And running a speed test such as www.exetel.com.au/speed whose ADSL test consists of downloading about 3 megabytes of data, there is always time to go off and make a cup of tea before checking whether the speed test has finished; it often hangs without finishing at all.
In my opionion, Vodafone are in breach of the "misleading and deceptive conduct" test in consumer law in offering a service described as mobile broadband, and in offering a data allowance which their congested network's minimal performance will not allow a customer to use in the allotted period.
The time of day seems to matter little in the woeful Vodafone performance; even at very off-peak hours (e.g. 3 am) the performance is just as bad. This is an overstressed and unreliable data network run by an organisation that does not care if it fails all the time, every day, and does not want to know about it.
This is not even to mention the multiple occasions per 24 hours where DNS queries stop working and require a Pocket WiFi power-down/power up to correct, or the times when the data just stops coming for long periods and requires the same solution.
And all of the above is in areas where the mobile signal strength is full-scale on the Pocket WiFi's display and status page.
An honourable mention in the Vodafone "vile experiences" league table goes to the Vodafone registration/activation web pages, which repeatedly display "internal error" messages in red and demand that the customer complete the process by telephone (fat chance given Vodafones's call centre performance).
The only rational customer response in the face of such a misleading and inferior offering is to unlock the device and use it with another carrier (but OzB members already knew that). Vodafone has not improved over the past few years, and is not worthy of any lost customers returning to it.