Technical Solution

Setting up Airtel GPRS on Ubuntu via Nokia Communicator 9300 and data cable.

Zyxware Technologies | | 2 min read
We had never had to configure an Airtel GPRS internet connection on a Laptop with Ubuntu before as we never had a customer who had one such connection. We however got an opportunity last day when we installed ubuntu on a compaq presario F733AU laptop. Setting up internet access on Ubuntu is easy in itself and setting up GPRS could not have been any easier. The customer had a Nokia 9300 communicator with a USB datacable.

1) Plug in the phone to the Laptop via the USB datacable and then identify the vendor ID and product ID of the phone. Run

lsusb

to get an output similar to the following

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0421:0443 Nokia Mobile Phones

Here 0421 is the vendor ID and 0443 is the product ID of the Nokia phone. Your values could be different based on the phone you are connecting. But more often than not the descriptions should help you find the right line corresponding to your code. You will have other lines of output corresponding to other USB devices

2) Now run the command

sudo /sbin/modprobe usbserial vendor=0x0421 product=0x0443

Make sure you replace 0421 and 0443 with whatever values you had identified as the vendor ID and the product ID of your phone.

3) Create your wvdial.conf by running the following

sudo wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf

4) Edit your /etc/wvdial.conf to look similar to the following. You will most probably have to edit only the Phone, Password and Username lines

[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init3 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","airtelgprs.com"
Modem Type = USB Modem
Baud = 460800
New PPPD = yes
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
ISDN = 0
Phone = *99***1#
Password = airtel
Username = airtel
Stupid Mode = 1

5) Run wvdial and you should be online immediately. You can also configure two shortcuts on the panel to point to wvdial and poff.wvdial to turn on and turn off the connection without opening a terminal window at all.

Configuring GPRS internet access using any other phone other than Nokia or any other service provider other than Airtel should follow a similar process (unless of course you run into problems). If you run into problems and you are located near our offices you can drop by and try to get the problem rectified by our experts or if not you can use the comments form below to ask us your questions and we will try to help you in whatever way we can.

Reference: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-257127.html

 

 

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