Meteor prepay mobile broadband - 50GB for €30, 180 day pass

The Meteor App is gone completely and I remember running into the same issue before uninstalling it. Unfortunately, the 'My eir' App does not seem to support prepay mobile broadband, at least not the former Meteor prepay broadband SIMs. For example, when I log into the App, it says I have no active plan and gives me a list of Simplicity plans that are for phone SIMs. On the other hand, it does show the correct balance on that SIM.

What I do is log into 'My eir' on their website (https://my.eir.ie/), which accepts the Meteor login details. Once logged in, it will show your usage if the pass is still active. It will give the option to top-up or buy a new 15GB or 50GB pass.

Before you top-up, make sure the SIM itself is still active. If the dongle shows 'No signal' where you previously had coverage, you will need to contact Eir to re-enable the SIM card. Alternatively you can order another SIM. They no longer charge for the SIM from what I can tell on their website.

They deactive the SIM 6 months after the last top-up, which coincidentally is the day after the 180 day pass expires. That happened with me as I mainly use the SIM as a backup Internet connection or in my dual SIM phone when my Vodafone data bundle runs low. Their webchat reactivated it, although I had to send a top-up to the SIM # to do this, which I did with my online backing.

The 15GB and 50GB prepay SIMs are available again on this page. Click the 'Get a Mobile Broadband SIM' further down the page to get just the SIM card. I recommend getting an unlocked 4G router or WiFi Hotspot unit elsewhere, such as from Amazon. This will avoid the hassle of trying to get unlocked at a later stage.

For a few weeks after Eir closed down the Meteor website, the Eir website only showed the puny 30 day 7.5GB plan. However, that page now shows the 30 day 15GB and 180 day 50GB plans.

So far I have not tried tethering abroad with this SIM in my dual SIM phone.

What I can confirm is that tethering works fine for me with the 'broadband' APN, at least to my Amazon Kindle Fire. The next time I'm in Northern Ireland or the UK, I will try tethering again with it.

The following shows the chosen APN with my OnePlus 2. I have this SIM in slot #2 and had it set as default for data when I was tethering:



The following is the full configuration for this APN on my phone to compare with. This phone shows 'Not set' for an empty field.

• Name: Broadband
• APN: broadband.mymeteor.ie
• Proxy: Not set
• Port: Not set
• Username: Not set
• Password: Not set
• Server: Not set
• MMSC: Not set
• MMS proxy: Not set
• MMS port: Not set
• MCC: 272
• MNC: 03
• Authentication type: Not set
• APN type: Not set
• APN Protocol: IPv4
• APN roaming protocol: IPv4
• Bearer: Unspecified
• MVNO type: None
• MVNO value: Not set
• APN PPP phone number: Not set

Just to rule out a DNS issue, try pinging from the device such as to 8.8.8.8. If that gives a ping response, try setting the DNS to Google's DNS, i.e. 8.8.8.8 (primary) and 8.8.4.4 (secondary) on your device.

grange mac wrote: »

Apologies if this is incorrect place to ask but would the €30 for 50gb data work with a motion camera which will send an mms message to my mobile?

If MMS works, I suspect that they will charge the same as sending an MMS from a prepay phone SIM, i.e. 30c per picture message.

When I last used the Eir mobile network, it had a rather annoying quirk where it would intermittently connect with a maximum speed of about 320Kbps. This usually happens when it connects in GSM mode and hands over to 3G. When this quirk occurs, a 4G capable device has the tendency to get stuck in 3G mode on Eir also even with strong 4G coverage.

Try restarting your data device. If you are using a phone, you can toggle airplane mode on/off. I had this issue with both Eir mobile broadband and phone SIMs. I switched my mobile to Vodafone last year as the issue was ongoing for about a year. I haven't used the Eir mobile broadband since last year either as the Three network improved a lot in our area, so am not sure whether Eir fixed this issue.

If your device is 4G capable, try setting the APN to broadband.myeirmobile.ie or broadband.mymeteor.ie. I'm not sure if the broadband SIM will connect in 4G mode with the data.myeirmobile.ie APN.

The Eir prepay broadband SIM only supports data and text messages. The SIM will not work for voice calls, however you can use a VoIP service such as Goldfish or Freespeech over the data connection. With most newer Android phones, you can configure the phone to make/receive calls over VoIP, however, there can be a noticeable delay when calling over a 3G (H+) connection.