In late February, I bought an EE data SIM, for use in a Mi-Fi device. As it happens, it’s a Mi-Fi device from Three, but I must have unlocked it some time back.

At £50 for 120GB, I felt this was not too bad, for a pre-paid SIM. It is valid for 12 months, rather than the more usual one or three.

I activated it on the 1st March, and I have used it most weeks since, although I’ve only used about 25GB of the 120GB allowance.

On 1st September, I went to use it, and found that, while my laptop connected to my Mi-Fi (i.e. the Wi-Fi connection was fine), it was not connected to the Internet.

Logging into the Mi-Fi, it showed that the SIM was not connected.

I guessed that, since it was bang on the 6 month / 180 days mark, it might be something to do with EE suspending the SIM for lack of “paid” activity, since I use it only for data.

Seems odd, since it was a sold as a SIM specifically for a long-term data bundle, without any credit for any other chargeable event, but oh well. I’ve worked with telco billing systems for long enough to know that the unexpected is entirely expected.

(Looking on Amazon now, as I write this, it seems that others have run into the same issue.)

I tried to send an SMS from within the Mi-Fi’s interface, but that did not work. Not a particular surprise, as I have no credit on the SIM.

I put it in a phone, and attempted to make a call. Rather than dialling my intended destination, EE re-routed the call to an automatic message, saying that my SIM was suspended, and to press “1” to unsuspend it.

So I pressed “1”.

And it unsuspended it, pretty much immediately.

I put the SIM back into my Mi-Fi, connected to it, and I was connected to the Internet.