[ale] NewbieQs on 'tethered' net connections1

[Sean C. McCord]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 09:54:26AM -0400, Mills John M-NPHW64 wrote:
>Sean, All -
>
>1. I have an e-mail address for SMS and can reply to those messages or forward them to regular phone numbers.
>2. I can access their "T-Zones" which are basically a web flea-market for the carrier to sell me stuff.

What they set up for T-Zones by default is their own marketing hype
portal, but you should be able to enter other addresses.  The catch,
as may may have found out, is that because your phone has a very
limited browser, you can only access WAP sites, not WEB sites.  That
is not a restriction of your service or the phone, but of the phone's
browser.

That said, they may, of course, have something special for the prepaid
account.  I've never messed with data on the test pre-paid account I
have from them.

>I asked T-Mobile about adding the $4.99/mo access and was told it was not available on my account; on the other hand I can keep the prepaid account alive for only a few $$/mo and it serves my needs for mobile phone service.

That does make a certain amount of sense.  After all, since they are
not getting a monthly subscription from you for voice service, that
would be like simply providing (albeit slow) internet access for
$4.99/mo.  I can understand them not wanting to do that.

>I have a dial-in computer account for contingency use (mostly text mail reading) and that's the access I need from my laptop. I could live with 9600 Bd, but not love it!

You should not need an analog dialin account.  The dial-in for
T-mobile is unauthenticated.  You don't need an account as long as you
have data access (and normal T-Zones will suffice).

>The phone is a Nokia 6030(B?). It's unlocked. (T-mobile will do that if they think you'll stay around - or at least they did when my accounts met their benchmarks.) In principle the phone even has an embedded web browser.

My older Nokia had a POP (proprietary junk) port, and you could buy a
data adapter (USB or serial).  My newer one actually had a USB port
built-in.

In either case, the connection was rather inobvious:  you had to set
it for "Nokia" mode to get it to work as a modem.

That said, you should be able to find an EDGE-capable phone with a USB
plug for less than $50 on line.  Just look for older models.  The EDGE
does make a significant difference.  You go from about 9600bps on the
basic GPRS to as much as a couple hundred kbps on EDGE.  Both pale to
3G service, but EDGE is quite serviceable.

The other problem with 3G is the lack of availability of older (read
cheaper) phones with 3G, particularly in T-Mobile's frequency range
(they have a unique frequency range for 3G different from any other
carrier).  GPRS and EDGE do not have this problem.  They are served in
the same frequency ranges as a US GSM carriers (yeah, yeah, there are
only two...), 850MHz and 1900MHz.

>It does support GSM, but connection to the computer is a problem: Nokia doesn't sell a data cable and the 3rd-party one I bought (USB-serial) seems about half functional under 'gnokii'. There is an external data connection for service use (not the pads under the battery that I've seen in photos of some models). I don't know if the problems are electrical in the adapter; or logical in the phone's functionality, the adapter, or gnokii's expectations: I can read the phone's profile, but then fall into a series of timeouts; I can extract the phone's contacts but when I reload them I have to do quite a bit of rework to find the uploaded numbers again.

I don't know that I would base anything on Gnokii.  It is more for
communicating with the phone directly than for using the phone as a
modem.  None of my phones have ever worked with Gnokii.

>Phone model reports as 'RM-225'; I can't get a solid reading on whether AT commands are supported.

Nokia phones apparently have different "modes" of operating with their
data ports.  What has always worked for me is "Nokia" mode.

>I expect the smart answer is, "Get a real phone and a real account," but the partial responses keep leading me on with the possibility this might actually work.

It would make things easier, certainly.  I don't even know if this
will work on a prepaid account, but if you have T-Zones, you might be
in luck.

--
Sean C. McCord
CyCore Systems
scmlist at cycoresys.com