So as i said before, i have managed to borrow a wireless modem while i’m moving house. However, due to the package i was on, it was going to cost £4 a day.

Previously, when moving house, i had used a T-Mobile wireless card, and only paid £1 a day. So i thought i must need a different SIM card for a different package.

I went to the local T-Mobile shop. Upon asking the person at the desk for a £1 a day SIM for a modem, i was told that i could either have a contract one, at £15 a month for 18 months, or a PAYG one, at £4 a day.

So what had happened in the year between the two SIM cards?

Basically, T-Mobile have decided that they can now use the idea of wireless broadband to their advantage and charge quite a lot for it. 

I wasn’t about to walk into the same T-Mobile store and ask for a different SIM. So i went to Carphone Warehouse.

I said i was looking for a normal SIM card for my phone. He asked if i already had a T-Mobile phone, i said i did but it was on a contract and i just wanted a PAYG SIM for it. He obliged and i got £10 of credit for £10.

I think came home, tried the new SIM card in the wireless modem, and what do you know? It worked!

The speeds were reasonable, if not a bit odd.

Using Cachefly’s test files, i was getting 1 MB/s for the 1 MB file. 800 kB/s for the 5 MB file. 30 kB/s for the 10 MB file. Can anyone smell traffic shaping?

After doing a credit check, it turned out that i had only paid £1 for about an hours traffic and then after another hour, still only £1.

So now, i’m paying £1 a day. There’s meant to be a download cap on this SIM of about 40 MB a month. However, if they kick me off, buying a new one for £10 is still cheaper than paying £120 for month. They would have to kick me off every 2.5 days, which i really can’t see them doing.

So thanks T-Mobile, thanks a bunch.