Matthew Revell

I have a Nokia 6233. It’s a 3G phone and is on Virgin Mobile UK. With the help of a USB<->Nokia cable (£3 from eBay), I’ve just used it to connect my Ubuntu laptop to the internet.

Following two threads on the Ubuntu Forums I managed to get connected with minimal fuss.

Here’s my /etc/wvdial.conf:

[Dialer nokia]
Init2 = ATZ
Init3 = ATE0V1&D2&C1S0=0+IFC=2,2
Init5 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","goto.virginmobile.uk";
Modem Type = USB Modem
ISDN = 0
Phone = *99***1#
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
Username = user
Dial Command = ATDT
Password = wap
Baud = 460800

After disabling networking via the Gnome network-manager applet, I opened a terminal and typed wvdial nokia. After some blurb, it reported my primary and secondary DNS servers and I was online.

I don’t recommend you use Virgin Mobile for data, though. At £5.12 per MB you’ll pretty soon be remortgaging. However, it has proven that I can get online with a phone as a modem using Ubuntu, so I’m now off to find a provider with a decent data tariff. 3 and T-Mobile look favourite so far, although everyone I speak to at 3 seems to have very little knowledge of using a phone as a modem.