mobile_service

Here's just a taste of life with a BigPond Elite™ USB Mobile Card (on mac os x 10.6.3 and the latest driver 2.16.9):

Wed May  5 21:38:02 EST 2010 - plugged in
Wed May  5 21:38:42 EST 2010 - connected (with 100% next g signal)
Wed May  5 21:44:57 EST 2010 - disconnected
Wed May  5 21:45:18 EST 2010 - connected
Wed May  5 21:47:36 EST 2010 - disconnected
Wed May  5 21:47:57 EST 2010 - connected
Wed May  5 21:50:53 EST 2010 - disconnected and the 'bigpond wireless' application crashed
Wed May  5 21:51:20 EST 2010 - connected
Wed May  5 21:51:43 EST 2010 - disconnected
Wed May  5 21:52:12 EST 2010 - connected
Wed May  5 21:52:22 EST 2010 - disconnected
Wed May  5 21:52:43 EST 2010 - connected
Wed May  5 21:54:40 EST 2010 - disconnected
Wed May  5 21:54:59 EST 2010 - connected
Wed May  5 21:55:24 EST 2010 - disconnected
Wed May  5 21:55:45 EST 2010 - connected
Wed May  5 21:58:19 EST 2010 - disconnected
Wed May  5 21:58:44 EST 2010 - failed to detect device (sim card not found)
Wed May  5 21:59:04 EST 2010 - plugged in
Wed May  5 21:59:32 EST 2010 - connected
Wed May  5 22:02:56 EST 2010 - disconnected
Wed May  5 22:04:03 EST 2010 - failed to detect device
Wed May  5 22:04:34 EST 2010 - plugged in
Wed May  5 22:04:56 EST 2010 - connected
Wed May  5 22:07:10 EST 2010 - disconnected
Wed May  5 22:07:36 EST 2010 - connected
Wed May  5 22:13:10 EST 2010 - signal strength suddenly dropped to 0 and disconnected
Wed May  5 22:13:28 EST 2010 - plugged in
Wed May  5 22:13:51 EST 2010 - connected (with 100% next g signal)
Wed May  5 22:16:41 EST 2010 - disconnected and the 'bigpond wireless' application crashed
Wed May  5 22:17:31 EST 2010 - connected

The network activity consisted of gmail, twitter and browsing a few websites (fairly minimal traffic).

I sincerely hope this is just a faulty usb device - I find it impossible to believe that anyone would pay money and tolerate this.