[mdlug] It happened...

[Joe Doehler]

At 09:15 AM 12/20/2007, Carl wrote:
...
 >Second, what advice do you have for a cell phone that can
 >be used for Internet access?  I remember someone mentioning
 >a certain model of phone that you can buy a USB cable for
 >and connect without an extra fee.  I don't mind paying extra
 >for a phone or for service if I can surf at no extra charge.

I have experience using a Siemens S46 and a Motorola V3 tethered to a 
laptop via USB. These are both GSM phones that act as digital modems. 
The first thing I found out is that my carrier blocked DUN: I can't 
dial up to an independent ISP. I believe that this is universal; if 
someone has a different experience, please share it with us.

I must use my carrier as ISP, and therefore had to buy an Internet 
plan add-on. The plans vary; some plans are unlimited, some plans 
charge you by the byte. Some plans charge different rates depending 
on whether you access the Internet from the phone itself as a 
stand-alone, or use the phone in a tethered mode. Some plans restrict 
what web sites you can access, some are wide open. For some plans, 
you must agree to have your phone number captured by the web sites 
you visit (meaning you should expect junk delivered to your phone 
later..) So read the agreements carefully.

Setting up these phones as digital modems was a nightmare. The key is 
in setting the proper modem init string. Customer support was of no 
help, and the provider's web site did not have it anywhere. Another 
aggravation is that the utilities provided by Motorola reset the init 
string in the laptop's configuration files to NULL.

Both of my phones use GPRS for data transfer. Technically, I should 
be able to get ~180Kb/s on good days, when the bandwidth is not 
shared with other users. The most I have ever seen with my V3 is a 
tad over 30Kb/s (about the speed of a 28.8 analog modem;) with the 
S46, about half that. SSH and SCP connections routinely fail after 
about 100KBytes of transfer, but they are getting more reliable with time.

EDGE over GSM is supposed to be faster, but the phone selection 
narrows. I am not sure how much of a speed advantage EDGE has over 
GPRS in real life: I am not getting the full promise of GPRS, so why 
would I with EDGE?

I would not recommend this setup for primary Internet access - only 
for "plan B" if you need it :-)

Joe.