The stick in the bundle was a Huawei E160 without any lock, but it is completely sold out and Tchibo is not planning to restock in the short term. However you can use the data options with any Tchibo prepaid SIM, which is currently sold for only € 1.
Btw I've just updated the prepaid wireless internet wiki: Germany - Tchibo - Prepaid Wireless Internet Access

Blau surfstick
 

In addition to its 20€ a month prepaid unlimited data offer, Blau is now offering a USB data stick for 99€ + 5.90% shipping which includes a Blau SIM card and 20€ credit. A bit expensive compared with the other USB data stick offers, but worth mentioning. The stick is SIM unlocked and supports HSDPA, even though UMTS is the highest speed you'll get on Blau (E-Plus). No mention of whether it supports 3G bands other than 2100.

blau.de Surfstick with Flatrate Data

According to Henning Gajek's blog entry the Blau stick is a XSStick®W12 from 4G Systems, which supports UMTS2100 only.

€ 99 is a real rip-off if you consider that brandnew Huawei E180 dongles (feature HSDPA 7.2 MBit/s, HSUPA 5.76 MBit/s, UMTS900/2100, microSD-reader, voice telephony) are sold in the Vodafone version for € 60 at eBay.de (called "Vodafone K3715", unlocked and easily unbrandable by a simple firmware update from Huawei).

Beyond that you should be aware, that blau uses the eplus network, which is total crap, as it neither supports HSDPA nor EDGE and further is overloaded in many many places. Especially during peak hours you often cannot even establish a data connection on the eplus network and if it occassionally succeeds you have modem speeds and I'm not talking about those "fast" 56KBit/s-modems. Also eplus has configured a restrictive overload protection on a lot of NodeB's which causes subscribers to be handed over to GSM as soon as a connection (no matter if voice or data) has been established. So there's really no use of a UMTS-device on the eplus network.

By the way, Henning Gajek wrote that he tried to post the above linked blog entry through the Blau stick, as he was writing the article while unboxing it, but he resigend and switched to his ADSL-connection, since data rates were terrible.

So folks better keep your hands off eplus and all the MVNO's that use their network, as you will get way better service for the same price from Tchibo, respectively O2.

Hello,

I mentioned in my Blog contribution, that it could be possible, that Blau customers would take the USB-Stick and change the SIM-card to another network, which is not so congested as E-Plus Germany is at this time.

UNLOCK phones, datacards, sticks, modems....
If there are any problems with unlocking, refer to Semaf Electronics - www.entsperren.org / Startseite in Vienna, they unlock nearly everything for 10-20 €.

Unlocking is completely legal in Austria. Just go, wait, pay and be happy!

Unlocked Huawei 160 sticks you will find in Hofer shops (=austrian ALDI) in Austria for now €60.-
I used it with an A1 prepaid SIM 1GB/€15.-/1 year, refill €20.-/1GB/1 year.

Now I use Huawei E220 from swisscom, comes with CHF 10.- balance and SIM for CHF 99.- (=ca. €68.-), no lock.

During a promotional offer valid until May 12th, Tchibo offer their SIM card including 50 free minutes for the first month plus 10 free SMS monthly for the first year for absolutely free including free shipping. Unfortunately they ship only within Germany.
To order go to Tchibo - Jede Woche eine neue Welt put the SIM into your shopping cart ("in den Warenkorb legen"), check out ("Warenkorb / Kasse") and enter "NEWSIM" as discount code (input field below "Geschenkkarte / Gutschein einlösen") and redeem it ("einlösen").

According to this wiki page, VPN is apparently blocked on Tchibo. Anyone have more information on whether this is accurate? Does O2 block VPN as well (since it's their network)? My father will be visiting Germany and needs data access with VPN ability.

Also, has E-Plus now upgraded to HSDPA from UMTS?

They do trials but not in broad coverage with HSDPA yet.

I dont know about VPN, we have o2 cards at work - if i can manage i can try to connect to our VPN over o2 tomorrow.

Chris