Unlock Vario II

[Guest stemill]

I'm off to oz in the new year for a month and am hoping to use my vario ii to keep a travel blog.

I thinking about buying a 3 PAYG sim whilst over there

So a couple questions

• Is there a way to sim unlock the vario ii at the mo?
  
• Will the phone work ok on the aussie 3 network?
  

TIA

Edited October 27, 2006 by stemill

[Guest Will]

www.imei-check.co.uk can unlock the vario2, as to Australia, it may be cheaper to get a payg sim over/under there...

[Guest nuttyphilt]

I got my M3100 unlocked by imei check, it works perfectly over here in Oz.

I'm currently living out in Australia (transferred out here for 3 months with work), well for about 3 more weeks anyway until I return to Blighty... I found the best pre-paid deal here to be on Optus. They have a package called Turbocharge, see link here. It works like this:

Buy a SIM for $30, but it comes with $30 of credit included.

The credit is actually 'worth' $120 and lasts for 30 days.

GPRS data is $5.50 per MB so your $120 will get approx 21MB. This is much better value than any other service provider in Oz.

Calls back to the UK are $1.38 per min, so $120 will get about 87 minutes (works out at about 15p per minute so not too bad).

Calls within Oz are 78c per minute, so this is approx 153 minutes. (or roughly 8p per min)

International texts are 35c, local texts 25c.

All in all, pretty good value I think.

I asked the guy in the Optus shop if pre-paid customers can use 3G and he said no. However, my phone shows 100% 3G signal all around the Sydney area.

I don't know where you'll be travelling but a couple of things to bear in mind:

1. You'll only get a 3G signal in the major metropolitan areas

2. If you're travelling in remote locations don't expect to get any mobile signal at all from any of the providers.

3. Optus, Telstra, Vodafone & 3 are the operators here - I'm guessing they all provide similar coverage.

4. I have some friends travelling down the west coast at the moment (Broome to Perth) - they tell me that the coverage is poor over there - they're on Optus too - but the west coast is very sparsely populated. I've had no problems with coverage whereever I've been (except in the Outback :rolleyes: )

HTH. If you have any more questions I can try and answer them

Edited October 28, 2006 by nuttyphilt