[olpc-community-support] t-mobile

[Doug Jones]

Anonymous wrote:
> 
> butter71 wrote:
>> ezundel at verizon.net wrote:
>>> Yes, I had difficulty registering with the T-Mobile site.  It told me  
>>> that my reference number was not valid.  Did anyone successfully enroll?
>>
>> i have the exact same problem.
>>
>> i sent mail to support and they sent me a form letter saying that i should wait 3-14 days for my t-mobile pin.  i don't know if they mean a new email that overrides the current one or if they didn't understand that i had already received the original email.
> 
> 
> Same problem here.  I wondered the same about the "3-14 days" message so I wrote them back again (just a bit ago, so no reply yet).
> 
> Gary



I had no problem registering with T-Mobile Hotspot.

I used the number that looked like 70000##### (what OLPC calls the 
confirmation number) and the email address I used when I first signed up 
on November 12.  I entered these on that (bogus looking!) page given in 
that email.  That got me a long alphanumeric PIN, which I cut and pasted 
into the next page I was sent to.  Then I had to give them my name and 
phone number and email address, and choose a username and password. 
That's it.


If you do all that and can't get a username, then the ball is clearly in 
T-Mobile's court.  But if you do get a username, perhaps you can benefit 
from my further adventures:


I found a nearby hotspot, drove over and parked in front, and booted up 
XO.  Hit the button with the circle of dots to display the Neighborhood, 
found the dot that was labeled 'tmobile', and clicked on it.  Waited a 
while, not much happened, so started a Browse activity and type 
google.com into the address box just to see what would happen.  Got an 
error.

Tried this four different times at different hotspots.  Finally 
connected at a Kinkos, without doing anything differently.  I think some 
hotspots are just cranky.  Perhaps even most of them.

These repeated failures are apparently enough to drive people to try all 
different kinds of wacky things to get it to work, like trying to 
install Java or Opera.  You don't need any of those things.  You just 
need to be persistent and find a hotspot that isn't flaky.