Monday, July 24, 2006

Advice on the Bluetooth DUN thing

Here's a little advice for those of you who have contacted me with problems following my instructions in this post:

1: Some carriers intentionally cripple Bluetooth DUN: Try using bluetooth DUN from your laptop and see if it works.
2: On T-Mobile, try internet2.voicestream.com or internet3.voicestream.com
3: On Cingular, try wap.cingular or isp.cingular (note no .com) There may be other settings for Cingular. I haven't tried it.
4: If you have T-Mobile, you want the "Total Internet" add-on to your account. This is what I have:
  • Get More 600 (600 anytime minutes, unlimited nights and weekends): $39.99
  • Any 400 messages (400 SMS or MMS messages): 4.99
  • Equipment Protection Insurance: $5.99
  • T-Mobile Total Internet: $29.99
After federal and state taxes and FCC fees, I pay about $90/month. With all the use I get out of it, I think it's worth it. This plan also includes T-Mobile HotSpots access so I can use WiFi on my tablet, smartphone, or laptop from any supported Starbucks or other location.

Just never buy an HP Smartphone and expect T-Mobile to support it. I have a 10 page nightmare about that I can share if you'd like.

2 comments:

Andrew said...

Hi. Some experience to share with you:

Verizon Wireless intentionally cripples Bluetooth DUN on the Motorola e815, and possibly others. They cripple other features as well (do a Google search--it's horrible), but the good news is that this particular one is easy to work around: just dial ##DIALUP in your phone and it will enable the DUN profile. I know that works with my phone but I don't know if it works for others, or even firmware updates to the e815.

Andrew said...

Oh, and if that doesn't work for you, buy a $10 phone-to-USB cable off of eBay and use your phone as a USB CDC/ACM-class modem. Linux has standard drivers for those. Don't know about Windows.