Telstra are a bit behind the times – their latest offerings of wireless modems don’t work under Snow leopard.
Thankfully it’s only the installer that doesn’t work so here’s how to get the wireless router version of their 3G modem working with Snow Leopard.

You need a web connection (seperate from your new wireless modem) to do this and a bigpond wireless modem.

You cannot put your new big pond username and password into the wireless modem until you have registered that particular wireless modem with your big pond username. The installation CD gets around this but because it doesn’t work in snow leopard, with snow leopard you will need an already existing Internet account to connect to the big pond site and set up your new modem ready for use. Here is how to do it.

1. In system preferences/network/airport  turn on Airport.
2. Connect to your new wireless modem airpirt network using the airport password (WPA) on the small buainesss card that came with the modem. The little wireless bars in the top right of your menu bar should go back to show that you are connected.

3. Open safari and type in 10.0.0.138 where you would type in the web address.  Press return. This will take you to the wireless router page, it should ask you for a username and password. When prompted type admin as the username and admin as the password.

4. On the menus at the top of the page go to diagnostics/ Next G

5. You need to find the imei number and the imsi number. Copy both of these numbers and paste them into text editor or something because you will need them later.

6. Now you need to go to a computer that is connected to the internet and type in this address into the web browser. If you only have one computer, at this point you will need to disconnect from the big pond wireless router and reconnect your old modem and get onto the Internet. When you are connected to the Internet, or using a different computer, go to the following address:

https://register.bigpond.com/hsdpa.do?imei= xxxxxxxx&imsi=yyyyyyyy

(where I have put XXXXX and YYYYY you need to substitute the numbers from step 5 above instead of xxxxxxxx and yyyyyyyy)

What this is doing is manually registering your next G modem with Telstra.

7. You will now appear at a big pond signup page and it will automatically take you through the process to sign up, asking you for an e-mail address, personal details and so on.

8. After you have finished signing up you need to go back into the wireless modem and put your new settings (Username and password) in.

To do this, it’s the same as steps 1 to 3 above, go to 10.0.0.138 and then to next G settings.
Click disconnect, after it disconnects you will be allowed to edit the user name and password.

Enter the username (username@bigpond.com) and the password you used during the online signup process.
CLick Connect – it should not be working

If you have problems:

Ring activations:
137663 2   will tell of the progress of your signup
Or ring tech support 133933 with any problems.

Hopefully Telstra will have this issue resolved soon!

Yesterday Telstra turned on internet tethering for the iphone! (I think they are the only carrier in Australia to do this.)

Tethering is where you use your iPhone as a wireless modem to connect your computer to the web. It’s useful if you are out with your laptop and you don’t have access to the web. Just plug your iPhone into your laptop via USB and it acts as a wireless modem! Here’s how to get it going.

1. On your iphone go to Settings General Network and if tethering is available with your mobile carrier there will be a pane called internet tethering that looks like this:

Turn it on. Tethering is now enabled on your iphone.

If you don’t see this – go to iTunes when your iPhone is connected and click on the ‘Check for update’ Button to download the new Carrier settings from Telstra.

2. Plug your iPhone into your computer via the USB cable. When tethering is on  you’ll get a message like this:

Click on network preferences and iphone will become your modem like this:

You should now be able to surf the web on your laptop. Your iphone will light up like this to show you are tethering.

Speed is great, ping a bit slow… (Make sure you are on a big data plan!)

NOTE: For other carriers (Optus, Vodaphone etc) you can do this too, click here to get the configuration file. (THis is not yet working for iPhone software 3.1 though.)

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.

This post is obsolete now – Telstra have just launched great new iphone plans with the iphone 3G S release.