Dell Wireless(TM) 5550 WWAN Card cannot use existing bigpond sim cards!

Hi

I live in Australia and recently purchased a lovely new lattitude laptop with a built in "Next G ready" Dell Wireless(TM) 5550 WWAN Card.

I imagined that this meant I could remove the sim card from my Bigpond NextG post paid usb modem and use it in my laptop.

Apparently I can't.  

After a couple of hours on the phone being shunted from Telstra person to person, it appears that NextG Sim cards purchased from telstra shops with a telstra modem cannot be used in Dell Laptop wireless cards.  Technically they can - the modem works perfectly but won't validate the username and password because the SIM card is not linked to that modem.

Unless someone has a solution for this, this is a warning to potential purchases of Dell Wireless(TM) 5550 WWAN Cards ...

Cheers!

Dave