Cannot connect on PAYG Mobile Broadband

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I'm using a DELL D620 notebook which has an integrated SIM slot. I'm running Windows 7. I've fitted DELL's 5540 mini PCI-e WWAN card, and inserted my o2 PAYG mobile broadband sim. I've put £2 on the SIM, giving me 200MB for up to 24 hours, just so I can test this thing out. I've got DELL's Mobile Broadband Manager software installed, the SIM is recognised, I can, and have, recieved SMS messages on my laptop through the sim, as this is how I received confirmation of my topup. However -- I cannot connect via mobile broadband! Every time I hit the "connect" button, it tries to connect for a while, before stopping without giving a reason why it failed to connect.

If I try and connect via Windows rather than through the DELL software, it says "Connection failed", and if I view the troubleshooter, it tells me that "The mobile broadband network connection operation (context activation) failed with error code 0". What does this mean?

Any ideas on how I can get this thing working?

[Anonymous]

I can now confirm that the data sim is working in my laptop without a dongle, just using the laptop's built-in hardware. Not bad for an alleged iPad-only sim card!

[jonsie]

Glad you got it sorted,:smileyhappy:

[perksie]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I can now confirm that the data sim is working in my laptop without a dongle, just using the laptop's built-in hardware. Not bad for an alleged iPad-only sim card!

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I guessed it should work, when they say iPad only, they mean they won't offer support for use in another device.

Were the settings we gave you correct?

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Thanks for all your help on here, much more helpful than the live support people, who insisted the sim would not work in anything apart from an iPad...

The APN that worked was m-bb.o2.co.uk, username "o2bb", password "password". These were not the settings being pulled off the sim by my laptop though. I've stored all the possible APN's as alternative settings, and just made the m-bb.o2.co.uk profile the active one.

It was a mix of things that prevented it from working... incorrect APN and settings pulled from the sim, a requirement to activate the sim in a phone before putting it into the laptop (I guess dongles are capable of activating sims, whereas laptop hardware is not), and also a reboot required, as there is a quirk in the hardware that doesn't allow it to "wake up" or change settings without a reboot in between.

[perksie]

Thanks for the update, the APN settings are the normal ones.

It's a pity the sim has to be activated in a phone, that's not very convenient.