Great news. Etisalat just made it possible to share your data plan across as many as four devices (read as SIM cards). Eons after the geniuses at Glo and MTN already did it. Heh.
Much as I’d like to say “meh” for the unforgivable dawdling, I can’t help being happy about this. Because my life just got a whole lot easier. All this time, I’ve been wasting money subscribing to separate modem and phone plans – no time to explain the really wonky economics of doing that. Or the hassle of needing to carry around a separate device to serve as hotspot for my other gadgets.
But there’s a few things I don’t understand. First of all, after some gobbledy-gook about SIMs with BlackBerry plans, the Etisalat webpage explaining the new feature says something about needing “new, non-activated SIMs in order to complete the process, which must be data SIMs”. What? So it won’t work with my SIMs that are already in use?
Further, the sharing feature requires your PUK number to activate. Apart from the fact that this is just annoying UX, I can’t find the SIM card holder that’s got the PUK on it. Perhaps I’m just careless and everyone keeps their SIM card holder years after they buy their SIM, like it’s their ID card. Well it probably is, with it being registered and all. But is this really necessary? Glo and MTN don’t have any of these annoying restrictions.
One last thing. Etisalat multi-device data plan sharing is available only to subscriptions from 3GB and above. So if you don’t spend at least N6,500 a month on a single data plan, sorry, nothing for you.
The full and confusing details are here. As it is, between this PUK and previously non-activated SIM business, I might have to visit their office to see if I can get it working.
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