Mobile Broadband help

[trevcharl]

Hi there, I am a "new" user of Ubuntu 10.10 and have had no problem adding an extra drive to my USB port, or getting to know the system. I am stuck on the 3g modem, as it seems the help file was written for some other version, but even then after translating it to this version, I still remain unconnected.

I will appreciate any help anyone can give me!

(At this moment I am on my wife's computer that uses Windows XP)

cheers Trevcharl.

[daark.child]

What kind of modem is it? The Huawei based models (usually found on Vodacom network), should work out of the box on most Linux distributions. All you need to do is click on the networking icon (on the bottom right) -> Edit Connections -> Mobile Broadband -> Add.

[Rubberman]

USB broadband modems appear to Linux as a modem, and require the use of the PPP protocol to connect with. How have you tried to install it? FWIW, no special drivers should be required, and I have never had a problem in getting a wide variety of such devices to work, including my tethered Android cell phone.

[trevcharl]

Thanks gents, will give it a try
cheers trevcharl

[papakus]

If you didn't succeed yet , it may be because the modem was not recognized . Check if there is an icon with the modem's name in the desktop . If there is , maybe the modem was recognized as a memory instead of a modem . If so , right click and click "Eject" . This way the memory mode can change to modem mode and be recognized by the Network Manager (later install usb_modeswitch to do it automatically) .

And if the Network Manager didn't improve from Ubuntu 10.04 , it is very slow (more than one minute to connect to the internet) and not efficient too , at least in my case . In my Ubuntu 10.04 I installed wvdial from the Ubuntu Software Center (which I knew is the default in the Linux Puppy 5.25) . Search the internet to know how to set up the wvdial . You will need to use a few command lines . One detail : one webpage informed that to connect you need to simply type the command : wvdial . But I had to type : sudo wvdial [sudo(espace)wvdial] .
If you don't want to use line command , you can install "Gnome PPP" .

[trevcharl]

Thanks guys, I have a MTN fastlink modem, it can run at 28Mhz/s, it has the same appearance as the 3g cell modem, but is much cheaper per meg. I will give it a try today, see how it turns out. Thanks for your help.
cheers