Flew into Christchurch end of October with my UK (Huwaei) moble broadband dongle and set about finding a network to use.

Telecom were very helpful but couldn't get it to bind to their network in the shop, and said that Vodafone were probably my best bet.

Went to the Vodafone shop in the centre of Christchurch and the salesman recommended the special deal where you spend $30 and get a broadband modem, SIM with $30 pre-loaded, and when you use the $30 to sign up for mobile broadband you get an extra 2Gb of data valid for 2 months added to your account.

Did as suggested and have been using the dongle ever since for mainly email and web.

I used the SMS function to text MYADDONS and the reply was interesting.

I received 3 texts:

"BBMore
2GB of Free data
Yr MB balance: 1474
Expire: 21/01/2011"

"BBSurfer
512MB primary recurring data AddOn
Yr MB balance: 512
Recur: 01/12/2010"

"Top up Bonus
Up to 100bonus wkend mins 2VFmobs &NZ landlines
Yr mins balance: 100
Expire: 01/12/2010"

The weekend miniutes are as expected because this is in a data stick so I'm not making phone calls (really nobody to phone in NZ anyway) but the thing that struck me is that all my data usage is coming off the 2Gb add on which runs for over 2 months.

The 512K valid for one month is not being used at all.

This means that to use the prepaid (not free) data I would have to use all the 2Gb in less than a month and then start on the 512K.
The 512K was sort of 'free' as I got the dongle for nothing and I needed to load $30 into my account to get the 2Gb of data but the way it has been set up has confused me a little.

I just hope that after the end of the month I don't have to purchase another $30 worth of data to keep using the remains of the 'free'2Gb.

Oh, and I've just remembered that I did use the SIM in a phone for the first few days as well as a data dongle - I loaded another $20 onto it (which explains the 100 minutes bonus).
No sign of that money, but I guess I only asked for add ons.

Need to find out how to check my balance and perhaps phone the UK before the end of the month to use up my voice minutes.

As you can tell I am still a little confused over the calling plan.
I assume that it may be slightly illogical to allow the set up of the special offer.

Also, do voice minutes roll over the end of the month or do I have to use them all up?

Also, the end date on the 2Gb is more than 2 months after I activated the data plan.
Is this good fortune, or do all the 2Gb data add-ons end on the 21st January?
I ask because I bought another dongle so that I could have a SIM for my phone (at $30 for $30 credit you can't argue) and I was assured that if I ran out of data on the first SIM I could activate data on the second SIM and would still get the free 2Gb for 2 months.
This seems like a good plan as we are here for 4 months and living in a (loitering within) tent.

I did try to Google for more information just now but the main hit was this thread before I came back to edit it.
Top marks to Geekzone for getting it up the top of the hits in a matter of minutes.


Cheers

LGC