Getting Mobile Broadband Working on Ubuntu 9.10

A couple of weeks ago I was on holidays, tried to access the Internet on the laptop using my mobile phone as a modem and nothing worked. It had previously worked fine, but turned out my "upgrade" to Ubuntu 9.10 actually downgraded the capabilitys of the Ubuntu Network Manager to connect. Finally, I have found a work around. This is what I did. Install wvdial and the corresponding Gnome GUI for it, gnome-ppp. You can install via the Synaptic Package Manager or the command line:

sudo apt-get install wvdial gnome-ppp

These will be used to create the point-to-point (PPP) connection via the modem (i.e. the mobile phone) instead of the default Ubuntu NetworkManager. So delete your existing Mobile Broadband connection that you may have already created (right click on the network icon in the top desktop menu, select Edit Connections..., go to the Mobile Broadband tab and then delete your connection). Now configure wvdial and gnome-ppp:

gnome-ppp

Select the Setup button and then Detect you modem (make sure your mobile phone is plugged in to the laptop). It may take some time or multiple attempts to detect - mine eventually found the modem at device: /dev/ttyACM0. Yours may be slightly different. Close the Setup window and you are returned to the main Gnome PPP window. For my service provided (AIS - see the details) I require the information:

• Username: internet
• Password: internet (in fact, I think the password doesn't matter)
• Phone number: *99#

Then Connect and after some time the connection is established. Open your web browser and you should have Internet connectivity!

Created on Sat, 15 May 2010, 6:22pm

Last changed on Wed, 19 Jan 2011, 11:55am