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Re: [LUG] mobile broadband things

 

On Wed, 10 Feb 2010, Paul Sutton wrote:

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Hi

I was looking at getting one of those mobile broadband things that plug
in to the usb port,

aparently I need extra drivers adn stuff to get it working under Linux,
not sure, but I am not really that confident with stuff like that

They simply look like a USB serial device, so you need PPP and a dialler - e.g. wvdial.

however the following in the 3 store caught my eye

http://threestore.three.co.uk/broadband/?id=1397

so it seems i don't need to actually plug it in to my computer so don't
need to worry about drivers,  i get something called a sim card with it,
which is something to do with mobile networks, don't know (it doesn't
explain what this is)

I think you do need to plug them in... Not sure where you've gotten that idea from... All the offers on that page are for USB broadband dongles...

A SIM card is the "magic key" that gets you onto the mobile network. All mobile phones have one and these dongles are just phones without the audio part.

I think they all work under Linux now - some supported, some you might have to create a conf file using a text editor. I plug my phone into my laptops all the time and they work - but I have to manually type the wvdial command to get online, but I can cope with that.

So shop around - see what's the best deal... And remember there's no such thing as "unlimited"... I'm paying £17ish a month for my O2 deal of 150 miutes talk time, 300 txts, "unlimited" internet bandwidth, but I'm not supposed to "tether" my phone to a laptop - it's an E90 with built in keyboard, screen, web browser, google maps, so who knows what difference it will make to them...

Gordon
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