I’ve not paid for access as yet but the O2 page loads up and get navigate through their T&C’s page, buy time, etc. So looks like all up and running now.

Once again a million thanks for this.

I’d just managed to find that out myself, and was coming here to pass on the information! I thought the dongle would automatically force me to go to the payment page, and didn’t know the address to go there manually. I’m all up and running now, thanks for your help

There’s no activation required as such. It’s ready to use out of the box, but as you’re on PAYG, you’ll need to buy some ‘time’ for your dongle. You can do this by visiting http://mobilebroadbandaccess.o2.co.uk/

You can do this directly on the Acer once you’ve connected as its a free page on PAYG, or you can do it from another machine. Once you’ve bought your time, a quick visit to that page will tell you how much remaining time/data allowance you have left. Hope this helps

I’ve got exactly the same setup – Huawei 160 on O2 PAYG withan Acer Aspire One. Although I can get the modem to connect with your advice – thanks! – I can’t get access to anything through it. Did you activate it on Windows machine first?