I was able to buy a second-hand one on TradeMe; (as their coverage area is limited at present and the seller was disappointed);

I guess I was curious what hardware they had gone for;

It is a Huawei E1552; with an initial ID of 12d1:1446 which needs to be flipped to give an ID of 12d1:140c

Some or all of the readers may/will know that these devices are seen initially as storage devices, as they carry software for some operating systems; and need to be "flipped" to unmask a different ID as a modem;

Two ways to do that: 

1 install usb_modeswitch which does the flipping; 

or 2

install sakis 3g which is a package http://www.sakis3g.org/ that I have found very useful; in NZ and various overseas places

(and sakis 3g does the flipping by itself installing usb_modeswitch)

usb_modeswitch comes as a .deb package; (for easier installation); and OpenSuse has an rpm build;

I installed it in OpenSuse and it automatically "flips" the device; it works fine there;

In EasyPeasy (an Ubuntu network remix variant) I installed sakis 3g and it works its magic there, and dials easily into 2 degrees giving a good response in suburban AKL