Huawei E585, EM770 and Telstra Next G

Telstra has better coverage in rural areas than other mobile operators and this may be a reason for choosing Telstra.

You should note the Telstra 3G network consists of 850MHz coverage ("Next G" network) combined with 2100MHz coverage in certain cities. See Telstra Mobile Networks

It is therefore likely that you want to use the 850MHz coverage. This frequency band is not common, so make sure you have a compatible modem.  See Telstra Network Coverage

Note the Huawei E585 is NOT compatible (only supports 2G in 850MHz band), so if you're out of 2100MHz coverage, you're going to get 2G data at best (and you'll need to select "3G Preferred", rather than "3G Only").

However the Huawei EM770 mini PCI card is compatible and works perfectly, although you will be restricted to7.2Mbps download / 5.76Mbps upload (Telstra claim to support up to 20Mbps download in certain areas).

$2 Telstra SIMs are widely available and can be activated as a mobile broadband SIM by calling 1258887 from a Telstra phone or 132200 from a non-Telstra phone (it appears you cannot activate these online as you can with voice SIMs). See Telstra Pre-Paid Mobile Broadband Getting Started

The following modem settings worked for me:

APN	telstra.internet
Username	[blank]
Password	[blank]
Number	*99#
Authentication	CHAP

UPDATE 23/12/2011: the more recent Huawei E585u-82 does support 3G in 850MHz band.  It's available as a Vodafone Pocket WiFi 2. Look out for half price deals on these / eBay.  They can be unlocked for 10 Euros using the dc-unlocker software. Once unlocked they work fine on Telstra's 850MHz 3G.