This post is also available as a German translation.
T-Mobile Germany and many other mobile operators across the globe are selling hardware OEMed from Option Wireless Technology to enable their customers to run UMTS and GPRS mobile data connectivity via PCMCIA cards.
Telcos are known to not being the fasted companies when it comes to technology changes and currently there are no Windows Vista drivers for the PCMCIA card which mostly identifies itself as Fusion UMTS GPRS WLAN – 3G Modem.
This obviously is extremely annoying as the Vista technology adoption program has been heavily promoted by Microsoft since more than 18 months.
While some customer service reps are still blaming Microsoft for the lack of support – which is total nonsense as it is not Microsoft’s responsibility to create 3rd-party hardware drivers – this not only is a T-Mobile problem. The large community of mobile workers has tried to resolve this for quite a while now. You find traces in numerous forums.
As I ran into the exact same problem I directly contacted Option for help. While the e-mail I’ve sent to T-Mobile Germany’s enterprise customer support has still not been responded to at all after more than 48 hours, Option Wireless Technologies responded within just five hours. (Maybe somebody at T-Mobile Germany should look into how they treat their customers – but this is a different story.)
Option’s answer did not resolve the issue but sheds some light at the end of the tunnel.
Here is their reply e-mail:
Dear Sir,
Support and drivers are indeed to be gotten through T-Mobile for your card. However we can say that the Vista drivers are in the process of being WHQL’ed and released as we speak.
Very soon we will present the drivers to all operators (including T-Mobile) who will decide whether to release them to their customers.
As your card is OEM we are sorry to say we cannot assist you directly. As a policy Option does not release beta drivers to any customers.
—
Best regards,
Nadim Saeed
OPTION Wireless Technology
Customer Support
Well, I hope T-Mobile will present the updated drivers to us soon. Otherwise at least my company has to look for another mobile data provider.
Update January 13th, 2007
Meanwhile T-Mobile send me a couple of e-mails. In their first one they claimed they have successfully tested their software under Windows Vista and funnily attached a Word file explaining how to create a connection manually – under Windows XP SP 2. I responded back that their device drivers do definitely not work under Windows Vista RTM (Release to Manufacturing). A couple of days later they admitted that they just did tests with Vista Release Candidate 1 – well back then the driver architecture was not what it is now!
So their current final response is: There will be updated drivers on the T-Mobile homepage for download once they are out.
Let’s keep waiting – it’s already a shame.
Update January 24th, 2007
Another e-mail from T-Mobile. They wanted to let me know that updated information about the driver availability for Windows Vista is likely to become available in March 2007. I am not kidding. Windows Vista ships January 30st and T-Mobile has nothing better to do than to wait for two months until they get their customers back online. The shame goes on!