"quicker" mobile internet access - a tip.

[phazey]

Hi,

I stumbled on something quite interesting last week, dunno if it's common knowledge here but hey, can't hurt to share it.

I use my mobile phone as a modem for my laptop quite a bit - sometimes in my house the phone line is not always available etc (Is'nt it unbearable how long some of these family phone conversasions go on for?!). I was also getting a bit frustrated at the speed - 9600bps is painful at the best of times.

So anyways, here i am waiting for Hotmail or something to load, and it dawned on me, the mobile has GPRS Internet - the damm thing is quicker than my laptop right now. So what if its possible to share that connection with the lappy and at least get a reasonable speed. The good point here is that it's easily possible.

As long as you have 1) a GPRS Enabled Phone with Bluetooth or IRDA (i can only vouch that a Nokia 7650 does work) 2) a bluetooth adapter (alough i think i saw IRDA also worked, but i have not tried) then you are ready to get online.

You;ll see a connection named "BlueTooth Connection" - normaly you'll enter your ISP details here, username,pass and phone number. But then you'll be using the phone as a modem and not a network device.

The trick here, is to enter NO username and password, and a phone number of: *99#

It'll verify and connect quite quickly - and thats it, your laptop is now on the GPRS network at 40kbps - a damm sight quicker than before.

Now perhaps a word of warning. I could be mistaken, but i believe GPRS has a data charge of 1 satang per KB - if this is incorrect then please accept my appologies. As i only use my lappy for messaging and SMS, the traffic is quite low - but in the times i do need to web browse, i'll use LYNX - which is a test only browser (alough you could always turn off images in IE etc). If used carefully, i reckon this could be a better (and quicker) way of mobile net access. Also remove the factor of paying for the phone call and ISP account charges.

And thats it. If someone gains something out of this, then I guess my job is done.

Cheers

./P

[stopper]

Thanks for the information.  What is your cost per minute for useage?

[phazey]

There is no "cost per minute" as it's an always on connection, which is why I *think* its a per-Kilobyte charge. I'll have a quick shufty around the AIS/Mobilelife website to clarify tho.

Cheers

./P

[phazey]

I think the relevent information is here:

http://www.ais900.com/mobilelife/faq/gprs.htm

Alough it's in Thai and as I am just bearly learning to count, i could be mistaken.

cheers

./P