I’ve had a few goes at getting a browsing pack for a Telstra pre-paid iphone, it took a while for Telstra to work out how to get it going, here’s how to do it.

1. Purchase the Telstra pre-paid Next-G SIM card, and get Telstra to put it in your iphone.

2. Purchase a datapack. Do this first or you will waste all your credit on expensive data rates! You do this by sending an SMS that says browsepluspack10 to 1257587

3. Turn off WIFI and try to access the web via safari. Your phone will give a message that says ‘could not activate cellular data’.

4. Ring the Telstra general number, 125111, and say to the computer lady ‘Next G mobile phone” Hopefully the computer lady will say ‘Was that Telstra Next-G mobile and Communic8′ – you are on the right track.

5. If you happen to talk to an operator they may suggest you ring prepaid (1258880). Do not ring pre-paid, you will get put to call centre who have no idea how to fix it. Ask to be put through to Next G mobile.

6. Ask if you are talking to Telstra Next G, if they say no, HANG UP AND GO BACK TO STEP 4!

7. When you are talking to a Next G person, you are almost there! Let them know you have an iphone, and you need it activated so you can access the data network. They will place an activation code on your account that let’s the network know it’s an iphone, you need to turn your phone off and on again, and now it will work.

There is no way to directly ring Next G.

1. Get a telstra bigpond external wireless USB modem, it looks like this:

2. Download the installation software from bigpond.com downloads. You actually need to have internet access to do this! Otherwise you can download it from another computer and copy it to your computer using a USB drive.

3. Follow the instructions to install.

4. When you are using the modem, make sure you plug in and turn on the modem after you boot up or wake up your computer, and turn of the modem before going to sleep. Don’t put your computer to sleep without unplugging the modem or it will crash. This is a bug with the Bigpond software.