T-Punkt’ed in Germany

So I’m having fun, T-Punkt is one of the German versions of a regular T-Mobile shop, but wait…not quite…because Deutschland’s citizens can purchase DSL, home telephones, combo DSL+Wifi+Cellular routers all under one roof. My experience started as I started my quest to stretch the proverbial penny (or Euro in this case). With Hotel wireless hovering in the 20 euro per hour range, I just had to find something cheaper to satisfy my cheap nature. I had gotten lots of help from T-Mobile USA with a list of hotspots I could use my T-Mobile USA hotspot account on, but they just didn’t work time and time again. So out of frustration, I blew 20 Euro on a 24hour card at the T-Punkt store in Celle.

So I happily started bragging about my new hotspot card to the rest of the American Journalist contingent….and found that it didn’t work at the Hotel…or the Hannover Hauptbahnhof (aka train central), nor the convention center…feeling more than just a bit cheated…I was confronted by the biggest T-Mobile booth I had ever seen. Unique to the Hannover Fairegrounds are permanent booths/buildings for carriers like T-Mobile/Vodaphone and a few others.

After a short wait in the tech support queue/line, I found myself showing off my new Nokia N810 Internet Tablet to a 20 year old deutchlander who tried and tried but couldn’t figure out what was going on…and as I got ready to just toss the 20 Euro card into the trash can, he tugged on my sleeve and asked me to follow him to the tier 2 tech support. Huh?! (This UberBang is actually called an interabang which is an emphatic query) Seems T-Mobile/T-Com has a permanent tech support facility just off to the side in a glassed in corner of the hall. We were seated at a diner style table (bench seats on both sides with a computer at the end) where a the tier 2 tech oohed and aahed over the Nokia and mentioned that perhaps here husband might buy one for her this Christmas. Well while she too couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the account on the card, she was bright enough to realize that the purpose of the card had passed, and that an immediate refund was in order. However she didn’t stop there, she pulled up a knowledgebase article and told me that to use the T-Mobile hotspots in Germany, I should append .US to the end instead of .COM for the account name. Voila…hotspot heaven….

Keep firmly in mind that your US T-Mobile phone will ONLY work here IF you signup for the service AND are willing to pay some roaming fees. The same goes for both mobile service as well as the hotspot service…but it’s a lot better than ending up paying the ridiculous hotel fees.

/brian chee