T-Mobile T610 GPRS Bluetooth OSX Powerbook Palm Tungsten T
From the every-keyword-someone-might-search-for-in-the-title department:
I’ve been blogging about the wireless connectivity my new phone service is providing, but I realized I forgot to say how I set it all up (what good is this blog if I don’t share the information?)
T-Mobile offers an unlimited GPRS data plan for only $20/month. GPRS is the data connection parallel to the GSM service, and it provides IP connectivity directly to the phone, with out having to do analog modem modulation/demodulation over a noisy wireless connection (I used to really dial-up through my PCMCIA modem on AT&T’s network, and it worked, but not very well). Since the Sony Ericsson T610 supports Bluetooth, I can use the phone as a WWAN access point for both my Apple Powerbook (running Panther) and my Palm Tungsten T (running PalmOS 5).
I’ve seen a few people on the web claim that you can set this up on your own without provider help, but from what I’ve seen, you have to call T-Mobile to get the phone setup to begin with (their technical support has been a let better than I was expecting). They will tell you to create a new entry in Connectivity:Data Comm:Data Accounts and then read the CID which the phone assigns to it. This CID is used to construct the “phone number” which your laptop and PDA use to “dial-up”. For example, I created a “T-Mobile GPRS” entry which the phone assigned CID 2 to. From this, the T-Mobile tech told me to use the string *99***2# for connecting.
OSX (Panther)
In the Network Configuration Panel, under the Bluetooth device, set the Service Provider to “T-Mobile GPRS” (or whatever) and set the Phone Number to *99***2#. Leave the username and password blank. Then under the Bluetooth Modem tab, set the Modem Script to “Ericsson Infrared” (this is the one setting which is hard to find). Now, under Internet Connect you should be able to activate the Bluetooth Connection (you may have to set the same number). The computer should connect to the phone over Bluetooth and you’ll see the phone “Connecting” just like it does when access the T-Zones feature (the little round globe comes up). You’re now online!
I’ve found this connection gets about 2K per second (similar to slow modem speed). Works great for grabbing email and RSS feeds, light web browsing, even IM and basic SSH terminals. The only problem I have is with OSX’s Fast User Switching, which seems to kill any dial-up connections when you switch users. If anyone knows how to get around this, it would help when we switch around the computer in the car driving down I-5 (heh).
Palm Tungsten T (PalmOS 5)
Settings here are pretty much the same. After you’ve paired the devices in the Bluetooth prefs, you’ll need to create a new Connection in that set of prefs. Name it something convenient then enter “Connect to: Phone”, “Via: Bluetooth”, “Device: [Your Phone]“, “Model: Standard GSM”. Then finally under Network prefs, create a service called “T-Mobile GPRS”, using the Connection you just created and the phone number you used before. The Palm will require a username and password, so enter in whatever. Now you will be able to connect from that prefs panel or from any application that needs network access.
I’ve found that the WebPro browser is the killer app for me on a net-connected Palm. I’ve setup a limited My Yahoo page with all the information I usually need quick access to: Yellow Pages, Maps, Movie Times, etc. Being able to look up this information from anywhere is really useful.
I haven’t found a mail application which I really like yet. VersaMail doesn’t support SSL it seems and SnapperMail is POP only. Besides, since I can’t get a keyboard that works very will with the Tungsten T, then composing email isn’t going to be all that convenient.
Hope this is helpful to someone out there!
Thanks so much! I’ve just today finished the same setup. 17″ PowerBook, Palm Tungsten T|3, Sony Ericsson T610.
I’ve been all over howardforums.com looking for the exact information you provide above. So concise. So to the point.
Thanks!
back in town — with unconscious mutterings
blog^2 I am back in town — I thought about…
Thanks for the info. I have a T3 and t-mobile service and am planning on getting a bluetooth phone and the unlimited internbet service this afternoon.
Hey, just got off really unsatisfactory call with T-mo Tier 2 Wireless tech - waste of 10 minutes of my life. But with your blog, here we are 2 minutes later with a working GPRS connection from my Dell via the T610 - thanks for posting this trivial, but really important, detail on how to get the GPRS connection working!
Oh yes - someone finally understands! Stroke of brilliance on the “every search term in the book” approach. This post finally allowed me to get somewhere on utilizing the GPRS account on my T610 with my Tungsten T. Sadly, I’m still getting errors, but I’m close now…. reaaall close. I can taste it. Thanks!
Thanks for posting this. It seems to work for me except that after the phone says “connecting” it just stops and nothing happens. This might be because T-mobile claims that it takes 24 hours for the service to work. Thanks for the info though. They want me to call back at 8 AM when the mac people are available to talk to me.
To keep a dial-up connection active and connected while switching users:
In the Network preference panel, in the settings for your phone device, under the PPP tab, click “PPP Options” and uncheck the “Disconnect when user logs out” option.
Thanks man, cant wait to try this when i get home from work..
can anyone clarify what you can do with the (free) wap data connection vs. what you can do with the $20/month unlimited data connection?
i am experimenting with free wap - i got my powerbook to work fine (using *99# instead of *99***2#), but i can’t get my palm to work. i’m using the settings provided by the “phone link” app on the palm, which seems to know about t-mobile and about my model of phone, but somehow doesn’t get the settings right. everything seems to go smoothly in the pairing of the devices, set of of the palm, etc. but then when trying to do anything (like surf the web or check mail), it doesn’t seem to have a dns server configured.
any tips? is there a somewhere i can find the raw settings/scripts to use to configure the palm to replace those installed by phone link?
thanks for the thread here… got my T610 working on my 17″ PB in seconds after hours of searching etc…. you’d think that T Mobile would have this info on their site in an easy to find fashion…
peace
zony
So, one would think that you could to this with your T630, but then again no. It is syncing beautifully with my G4 OSX 10.3.4, everything is working but the modem… rrr…
I used http://homepage.mac.com/jrc/contrib/tzones/ to connect a Pismo OSX 10.2 via t-zones in a jiffy.
Question: I pulled up Safari & was surfing everywhere. Why didn’t it require me to use T-Mobile Internet? I assume I was using t-zones. What is the difference b/w the two services? The T-mobile site is a bit confusing. Can’t I get unlimited web surfing just using t-zones? Thanks!
wow, that’s so cool. I just got my Orange World account and it is all up and running. Thanks for this post!
Taeke
Hey
Just found this.. it’s helping me a lot with setting up my connection. Saw you asked about if there’s a way to stop it disconnecting on switching users. Well in my network preferences there’s an option under PPP/PPP options that can disable disconnecting on user switching.
-Luke