Telstra to T-Mobile settings on phone

This post is for me, in case I ever lose the notebook in which this information is jotted down! And for anyone else in Australia who has a Telstra HTC Sensation phone who is going to the US and wants to purchase a US SIM card from T-Mobile so they can use their own phone while away.

For the past two years, I have purchased a ‘pay per day’ SIM from T-Mobile for the short trips I’ve made to the US (see http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/pay-by-the-day-cell-phone-plans for these plans). For just $2 or $3 per day, I get unlimited calls, texts, and internet while in the US. A 14-day US trip at $3 per day costs me less than $50, compared to potentially $1000 or more if I use my Telstra SIM and global roaming in the US. (See this horror story of a $12,000 Telstra global roaming bill for 13 days in Thailand: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/victorian-man-hit-with-12k-roaming-bill-after-thailand-holiday/story-e6frfkp9-1226618187589)

The biggest disadvantage is that I ‘lose’ my own phone number for the time I’m away (I get allocated a new US number each visit), and I have to find a T-Mobile store. Finding a T-Mobile store is not difficult as there are many of them. I believe you can get the ‘pay per day’ SIM activation kit from other locations, such as supermarkets, but I choose to get it direct from a T-Mobile store so that the store person can set everything up and test it all before I leave the store. A supermarket is unlikely to give you that sort of assistance.

Here’s what will happen in the T-Mobile store

After you’ve purchased the ‘pay per day’ kit (just ask for it — it’s not a box on the shelf), the store assistant will take out your HTC battery and Telstra SIM (DO NOT LOSE YOUR SIM!!! You’ll need it when you get back to Australia, so store it in a safe place, such as in a little zip lock bag placed near your passport or in your wallet). They will then insert the T-Mobile SIM and replace your battery and turn on the phone. They may also have to call a T-Mobile head office number and give/get a code to activate the phone.

Test that your phone can call out by calling the store’s landline number from your phone, then get the assistant to use the landline to call your new number. That’s all pretty straightforward and should work straight away. Likewise, you should get a text message or two from T-Mobile within minutes, welcoming you to their service and telling you how much balance you have on your plan. To test that you can send texts, SMS a US friend or the T-Mobile assistant who is serving you. Your phone and SMS are now working — so far, so good…

The final test is to see if you can get internet connection, so open the browser on your phone and do a search. However, if my experience is anything to go by, it’s unlikely you’ll connect as there are a couple of things you/the assistant may still have to do (see below), and because it can take a couple of hours for the internet connection to work properly (or so I’ve been told at two different T-Mobile locations in two different states in two different years; my experience has been that after the settings are entered, I can usually get internet connection within a minute or so).

If you can get a connection straight away, you’re done and don’t need to read any further. Enjoy your cheap US phone/text/internet time in the US, and don’t forget you can now use your ‘US’ HTC/Android phone as a tethered modem to avoid exorbitant hotel charges for internet access (these only seem to occur in the expensive hotels — most mid-range hotels in the US have free internet/WiFi).

If you can’t get internet connection, make sure the assistant enters the information below into your phone (or do it yourself if you’ve already left the store).

HTC/Android settings for internet connection via T-Mobile

1. Turn off WiFi for now (Settings > WiFi > Off).
2. Go to: Settings > Mobile Network > Access Point Names.
3. Tap the menu icon on the APNs screen then tap New APN. Complete the following details:
4. Name: tmobile (NO hyphen)
5. APN: epc.tmobile.com
6. Proxy: 216.155.165.050
7. Port: 8080
8. MMSC: http://mms.msg.eng.t-mobile.com/mms/wapenc
9. MMSC proxy (you may not need this one): 216.155.165.050
10. MMS port (you may not need this one either): 8080
11. Save the settings. Your internet connection should now work (though it may take a few minutes or up to an hour to do so, according to T-Mobile)

Changing back to your Telstra settings

1. Before the plane takes off for Australia, switch your phone to Airplane mode, then turn it off as required by the FAA. By putting it into Airplane mode before you leave, when you turn it back on it won’t try to make any sort of connection to T-Mobile (or to Telstra once you’ve got their SIM back in).
2. Once you’re in the air (or on the ground when you arrive if you forgot to put your Telstra SIM into your carry-on luggage!), remove the cover from your phone and flip out the battery.
3. Remove the T-Mobile SIM and replace it with your Telstra SIM. (You can throw the T-Mobile SIM away when you get home as it’s useless unless activated and you’ve probably only purchased and activated enough days for your trip.)
4. When you arrive back in Australia, turn the phone back on and switch off Airplane mode. It should all work as normal, as the Telstra APN settings are the default and should reset automatically once your phone picks up that you’re in Australia. At least, that’s how it’s been for me for the past two years — even though I wrote down all the Telstra APN settings, I’ve never had to change them back as they’ve automatically reset themselves.

Happy travelling!

See also:

• http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/t-mobile-phone-text-ok-but-no-internet/

[Links last checked April 2013]

Help should be at the point of need

I’m staying in a hotel in Seattle right now. I checked in on Saturday night, and as there’s free WiFi in all conference attendee’s rooms, I asked for and got the password. But I couldn’t connect — there were three WiFi connection options in the list and the password didn’t work for two of them. The other option was an unsecured network for the hotel, so I didn’t try any further than the message about it being an insecure connection (in hindsight, I should have as that’s where it was all along).

I called Reception who gave me a basic instruction that didn’t work, and who then transferred me to the tech support people at RoomNet. The person who answered my call couldn’t help and transferred me to someone who could. That person didn’t respond so she said she’d pass on my details and the tech support person would get back to me. He never did. Meantime, I had no connection. I rebooted my computer in the hope that it might be a wireless glitch, checked all my settings, then in desperation I used my phone as a modem, but the 3G connection was flaky too (in downtown Seattle???), so I gave up and went to bed.

Now, as a technical writer, I think it’s professional courtesy for me to read the room’s manual ;-). And in the manual I found a basic instruction for connection that had been missing from the hotel guy I spoke with and the only RoomNet person I spoke to. I tried the instruction next morning and everything worked perfectly.

So the instructions were in the room all along, but in the room’s manual, NOT on the tent card about internet connection that was on the desk!! This was a classic case of putting instructions right where people are going to need them, not hiding them away inside a manual several feet from the location and deep inside a manual that most people probably don’t read.

One other thing… this manual was difficult to read as they’d used a light brown font on a beige/tan paper. Talk about a readability issue! Even for good eyes, it was hard to read.

No wonder I couldn’t get connection

When we moved into our current house nearly three years ago, we had a whole heap of electrical and data cabling work done. And we had Foxtel (cable TV, even though ours is via satellite) installed a few days later.

One of my electrical requests was for a data port near the TV so that I could ‘future-proof’ the area in case we could do internet things on the TV. The data cabling was to run through the conduit inside the wall, across the ceiling, and to a data port in the office where I connected the cable to the network hub. Well, I’ve never used this data port. Until last weekend.

Foxtel now has an option to connect their IQ box to the internet to get new release movies and to watch things we might have missed. As we’re coming into the drought time for TV series in Australia, I thought we should try this ‘On Demand’ service — it costs nothing to get it activated by Foxtel, though you do pay for new release movies on a ‘pay per view’ basis.

So I connected a data cable between the Foxtel IQ box and my handy dandy data port near the TV. Then I called Foxtel to get it activated. That was all easy enough, but even after activating, I couldn’t get the On Demand service to work via my IQ box. Next step was to check the cable, so I removed it from the IQ box and connected it from the data port on the wall to my laptop. Nothing. I tried two other network cables. Still nothing. I went back to the office and followed the data cable from the wall back to the network hub — it was all connected correctly; I even tried a different port on the hub and a different cable. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

After all this testing, I figured there was something wrong with either the wall data ports at one or both ends or with the cable inside the walls and roof space. Or perhaps the electrician had never actually put cabling between the two data ports and all we had we useless wall outlets!

I called another electrical/data cabling company to come and check the cable, as well as do some other small electrical things around the house. They put a tester unit on the data port near the TV — and got nothing. The electrician said that even if the cable was ‘live’ but not connected properly, he’d still get something. He got nothing. So he pulled the wall plate off and this is what he found:

He asked if we had Foxtel installed after the data port was in — I told him we had, and that I recalled the Foxtel installers being cowboys who wanted to cut our coax cable to the antenna for our free-to-air services. We wouldn’t let them do that, but it seems that they cut our data cable without our knowledge!

The electrician thinks that what they did was cut the data cable, attach the three Foxtel coax cables to the end and pull it up into the ceiling so they could do their connections back to the satellite dish on the roof. What they didn’t do was pull the cable back down again! And they didn’t tell us they’d cut the data cable. Cowboys. And yes, the electrician found a whole lot of data cable up there in the roof space.

The upshot is that the data port doesn’t work, and it’s now impossible to get the data cable back down the conduit. It’s a single brick wall, so chasing a new conduit into the wall is NOT an option (brick saw, dust, plastering, painting…). We could perhaps go in from the wardrobe in the bedroom behind the wall, but again, lots of mess and we’d end up with a conduit inside a wardrobe, then coming out into the room before heading back into the wall. Also not an option.

The electrician suggested that some cheaper options would be some sort of wireless dongle from the Foxtel box back to my wireless modem/router (no idea of cost), or the ‘data over the power line’ option (about $80-$100 from Foxtel).

Or we could do nothing. That’s always an option.

Meantime, I’m angry again about those cowboy Foxtel installers — I was angry when they did the initial installation as they took little care and almost no notice of the customer, and all that anger has bubbled back to the surface now. Of course, as nearly three years have passed, I have no proof that they did this, but as they were the last tradesmen working with cables in that area, there’s a pretty fair chance that my electrician’s assumptions are correct.

White listing a URL in Trend Worry-Free Business Security

These instructions are for me — if they help someone else, well and good, but they are really a brain dump for me in case I have to do this again.

To whitelist/allow a URL that Trend Micro Worry-Free Security is blocking:

1. Log in to the server.
2. Open Trend Micros Worry-Free Security console.
3. Go to Preferences.
4. Select the Desktop/Server tab.
   
5. Scroll down to the URL Filtering section.
6. Type the URL in the URLs to approve box.
7. Click Add.
   
8. Scroll to the bottom of the page.
9. Click Save.
   
10. Close the Trend console and log out of the server.

It may take five to ten minutes for this new policy to cascade to the client computers.

Exchange Server connection on Android can delete ALL data

When I was on vacation in Bali last week, my phone did some weird things, notably unlocked the screen and randomly started entering letters and numbers for the PIN when there was no-one near it. I still have no idea why it did this and that may remain a mystery forever. The first time it did it, I caught it after 9 attempts (i.e. before the ’10 incorrect attempts will cause all the data to be deleted’ message came into play).

But the second time it happened, I couldn’t catch it quick enough and in front of my eyes, my phone deleted ALL its data and reset itself to the factory settings. That’s right — ALL my contacts (900+), mail, calendar appointments, all my downloaded apps, all my photos, all my audio books and ebooks, WiFi settings for various locations, all other settings and customizations (e.g. ring tones, display brightness, etc.), EVERYTHING!

That was very scary and made me very angry. I swore loudly at Android, HTC, and Telstra as I (incorrectly) assumed that one of them was the culprit.

But it wasn’t until I got back home and was setting up my Exchange Server sync settings again that I realized that the culprit was Exchange Server! When I set it up, I could connect to Exchange Server, but the emails etc. wouldn’t sync with my phone. I got a synchronization error message. However, you can’t deal with that message on the Exchange Server sync page — you have to go to the Notifications panel and click the link there to go to the permissions page for Exchange Server.

Well, my Exchange Server was probably set up with the defaults, which meant that it REQUIRED a PIN to unlock my phone, and the permissions screen also told me that activating the permissions meant that all data (I incorrectly assumed only Exchange Server data) could be wiped after 10 incorrect login attempts, etc. After I agreed to those draconian conditions, I could get my mail etc.

But as I’m the only person who has a phone linked to my Exchange Server, I called my PC Guru guys to see if they could change the settings so that a PIN wasn’t required when I unlocked the screen, plus a few other settings like the display time before the screen locked after a period of inactivity (mine was 5 minutes — it’s now 15 minutes).

So now my phone has no PIN for the SIM card and no PIN required for Exchange Server, which means that if it does weird stuff again, it won’t wipe ALL my data! Sure, this will make my phone vulnerable if I lose it, but I’m prepared to take that risk and not lose my phone. Losing all your data is no fun…

Fortunately, I had uploaded my Bali photos earlier in the day that the deletion occurred, and fortunately I had Exchange Server so all my contacts and calendar info was stored centrally. However, I still have to download all my apps again and reset my settings and customizations, and reconnect with several services like DropBox, TweetDeck, Facebook etc.

There goes another heap of hours…. (update: I plugged my phone into my PC and checked the hard drive on it — it looks like the photos and ebooks and audio books are still there [SD card?] but I can’t see the apps, so I still have to re-download them. Further update: Yay! When I’m logged in to Google, Google Play has a list of all the apps I previously downloaded and what’s currently on my phone [https://play.google.com/apps], so it’s pretty easy to download them again. Thank you, Google!)

There’s more info here:

• http://www.droidforums.net/forum/liberty-rom-dx/157449-exchange-server-permissions.html
• http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exchangesvrmobility/thread/97183707-8802-4912-b027-9e3c2dbf816e/
• http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2007/05/23/3402905.aspx
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998614.aspx

[Links last checked September 2012]

SIM card not recognized

I had a scary situation happen to me last week while I was on vacation — my phone decided to delete all its data and reset itself back to the factory defaults (more on that in tomorrow’s blog post…).

After it reset itself, I couldn’t access the Access Point Name information or do anything that required mobile connection — I kept getting a message that my SIM card wasn’t recognized. I waited until I arrived back in Australia, and tried again. My Telstra SIM card still wasn’t recognized. I was a bit panicky at this stage and arranged to pop into my local Telstra Business Centre the next day to try to resolve the situation.

Later that evening, I fiddled with my phone again. Still the SIM wasn’t recognized (yes, I had taken it out and put it back in somewhere along the way). Then I noticed that Airplane Mode was still on, so I turned it off. And with that my SIM became active again!

I felt like such an idiot.

The reason I’m writing this blog post is in case this simple solution helps someone else (or me, if I’m ever in that situation again).

Exchange Server sync with phone not working

A week or so ago I upgraded the operating system for my Android phone. Everything seemed to be working fine. A few days later I drove to the city to my client’s offices. I turned off WiFi as I left home and turned on Bluetooth. When I got to the offices, I couldn’t get my mail via Exchange Server on the 3G connection. I didn’t worry too much about it as I had meetings to attend and a lot of running around to do, but when I got home I turned off Bluetooth, and turned the WiFi back on. I still couldn’t get my mail via Exchange Server. I could get internet access without any issue, but I continued to get ‘Connection socket timeout’ errors whenever I tried to sync my mail, contacts or calendar from Exchange Server.

I started to point the blame at the operating system upgrade and even called HTC. They said to restart the phone (I’d already tried that), then to power off fully and power back on (I’d tried that too), then remove the battery for about 5 minutes (yep, I had already tried that too). Their next suggestion was to delete my Exchange Server account on the phone (after writing down all the settings!) and re-enter the account. If that didn’t work, they suggested that I turn off the router/WiFi and then turn it on again, and if that failed, then I was to call them back to do a factory reset (in which case I’d lose ALL my settings, apps etc.).

I was loathe to delete the Exchange Server settings off my phone — let alone do a factory reset — as it had worked fine a few days before (I was still blaming the OS upgrade), so I called my saviours at PC Guru to see if there was anything I had to set/reset on the server before I deleted the account and tried reconnecting. After a short discussion with me, my Guru asked if I could remote in from any computer to my server (e.g. via Outlook Web Access). I was working within my network, so I couldn’t test that.  So he tried to access my Outlook Web Access from his PC but couldn’t get a connection. He couldn’t get any of my other remote working options to work either, which would also explain why my phone couldn’t connect to my Exchange Server.  He thought a service on the server might need to be restarted, so he remoted in to my server and restarted the IIS web service.

Once he’d done that, he could see the login screen for my remote connection options, so he called me back and asked me to try syncing with Exchange Server again. It worked!

I had been unfairly blaming the Android upgrade, when it was purely coincidental that it happened about the same time the IIS service went down. Actually, the IIS service might have stopped some time before that as I usually use the internal WiFi to connect via my phone and rarely check from outside (I work from home).

Lessons learned:

• Sometimes events that you think are related are purely coincidental.
• I found out that there’s a web service (IIS) that needs to be restarted before I consider ever deleting my Exchange Server account on my phone and setting it up again.
• PC Guru are awesome! Again!

[Links last checked August 2012]

Keyboard not working

My new Windows 7 computer (and new keyboard) is only a month or two old, but this morning when I booted up, the keyboard was dead. How did I know? I used a trick I learned back in the early 1990s when I worked for my first-ever software company — I pressed the Num Lock key above the numeric keypad.  if the light stays steady when you press that key a couple of times, or if the light doesn’t come on at all (as was the case for me this morning), then the keyboard is dead.

But it may not be truly dead, as in you have to replace it. Sometimes, it just isn’t ‘seen’ by the computer, as was the case with mine this morning.

Here are the steps I used to determine if the keyboard was really dead, or just not ‘seen’ by the computer — do these steps in the order below to troubleshoot the issue; at any point where the Num lock key responds, you’re done!:

1. Make sure the computer is turned on (yes, I know that should be obvious, but let’s make sure the reason is not a switched off computer!).
2. Test if the keyboard is ‘live’ by pressing the Num Lock key several times. If the light is steady or doesn’t come on at all, then the keyboard and computer aren’t talking to each other.
3. Unplug the keyboard then plug it back in to the same place. If you’re using a PS2 connection, you only have one place you can plug it into. Try pressing Num Lock again to see if there is connection.
4. If your keyboard uses a USB connection, plug the keyboard into another USB port and try pressing Num Lock again.
5. If you have another keyboard, try plugging it in and pressing Num Lock to see if it responds. If it does, but your main keyboard doesn’t, then your main keyboard might be faulty. If the spare keyboard doesn’t respond, then it’s likely an issue at the computer’s end.
6. Plug your main keyboard back in to the computer and reboot the computer. Press the Num Lock key again. If it responds, all is right in your world again. If it doesn’t, then you may need to talk to a computer technician.

In my case, rebooting my computer with the main keyboard plugged back into its usual socket worked.

Oh, and if it’s a wireless keyboard, replace the batteries!

More internet woes… and solutions

I blogged the other day about my difficulties getting internet access. Well, this time I came across a different problem, but with some astute observation and a curious mind I was able to fix it.

I’m staying at a place in Texas where they have free WiFi for guests.  Initially, I could only get ‘Local Connection’, but after a few tries, I could get ‘Local and Internet’. Despite that, I couldn’t access the outside world. Supposedly I was meant to see an ‘I agree to the terms and conditions’ webpage from the accommodation provider, but I got nothing. Even the guy on the desk who came to my room to let me know he’d reset something was puzzled as to why I couldn’t get access, even though the network icon in the system tray told me I had an excellent wireless connection to ‘local and internet’. He asked me to try entering the URL for the resort, but that didn’t work either.

I’d been able to get a WiFi connection on my phone, but I couldn’t download my emails. Then I tried Google on my phone and got the Terms and Conditions webpage. Once I’d clicked OK on that, I was through to the internet on my phone and then all my emails downloaded fine. I had to use the browser first — downloading emails or opening TweetDeck wouldn’t display the Terms and Conditions page.

When I got the Terms and Conditions page on the phone, I noticed that the URL changed to an internal IP address — e.g. http://192.168.33.2/user/guest_tou.jsp. The 192.168 bit of the address was a dead giveaway that it was routing to a local server or router.

Hmmm… I wondered if typing in that IP address manually would work on my laptop?

I reconnected my laptop to the resort’s WiFi, opened a browser window, and entered the IP address. Voila! I got the Terms and Conditions page, clicked the ‘I agree’ button, and I now had full access to the internet.

I let the guy at the front desk know — he had no idea that an IP address will often resolve where a named URL won’t. And I’ve since helped a few other people in my workshop who were having the same problem as me get connected too.

 

Local connection only

Ah, the joys of traveling! There’s the whole phone thing, and then there’s WiFi in places like airline lounges, airports, hotels, etc.

I had a devil of a time trying to connect to the internet in the Qantas Lounges in Perth and Sydney. They have free WiFi and I was using my laptop. I was getting ‘Local Connection Only’ and just couldn’t get to the outside world. Eventually, I figured I’d connect to the Qantas Lounge’s WiFi via my phone, then tether my phone to my laptop and get access that way. That worked, but it still bothered me that I couldn’t get internet access direct from my laptop when everyone else seemed to have no trouble with it. I just thought it was Qantas’ connection, but it looks like I was wrong.

When I got to the hotel at Dallas Forth Worth Airport, I could only get ‘Local Connection’ too. I could access some websites (e.g. Google, an Australian news site, Wikipedia) but not others (e.g. my WordPress blog, an Australian bank site etc.). As I’d paid for this WiFi, I figured I’d call the number listed on the piece of paper with my password on it. I got through to a helpful chap who thought I probably had a static IP address on my laptop (that sounded familiar!). And I did.

After I noted down the static IP settings (‘cos I’ll have to re-enter them when I get home), I turned on the ‘obtain IP address and DNS automatically’ settings and suddenly I had full access!

So, my apologies Qantas — it was my laptop’s settings that likely caused the problem I had. I’m going to have to remember that for next time…