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three (UK) – N96 3G internet over bluetooth on OSX

Forgive me, planet Ubuntu, for talking about OSX… :(

I just managed to get 3G working over Bluetooth, and thought I'd share the recipe incase anyone needs this in the future. It's stupidly simple, which is probably why I could only find incorrect information online. I feel a bit silly posting something so easy, but I spent a long while looking for this so I hope it saves someone else the time. I'll get round to trying it on the Ibex soon (once support is a bit improved).

Here's how to set your Nokia phone up to connect to three's 3g network over Bluetooth. I am on a contract, not pre-pay. This may not work for pre-pay people.

  1. Follow the Bluetooth setup wizard to connect your phone to the computer. Make sure Bluetooth is on and discoverable on the device. These instructions will get you paired.
  2. At the end, tick the option to connect to the internet. Leave the telephone number, username and password blank and set the APN to three.co.uk. That's it, it should now work. Ignore anything you see elsewhere about *99# as a number or 3internet as an APN.
  3. Surf.

If you've already paired and cannot get back to the wizard then you can still set this up through network preferences. Just set the same settings for your bluetooth modem that appears:

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 28th, 2008 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Computing, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “three (UK) – N96 3G internet over bluetooth on OSX”

  1. Marius GedminasNo Gravatar Says:
    November 28th, 2008 at 8:36 pm

    I admit that it would have been much more interesting to me to read about the same thing on Ubuntu. Currently I have that capability, but I got it by handcrafting plain-text configuration files in /etc/ppp and /etc/chatscripts, which are a bit inconvenient. Isn't there an easier way?

  2. MattjNo Gravatar Says:
    November 28th, 2008 at 8:46 pm

    It is advisable to connect it over usb, bluetooth can't handle the bandwidth for hsdpa.

  3. Alan BellNo Gravatar Says:
    November 28th, 2008 at 8:56 pm

    according to the technical chaps at three apparently 3internet is supposed to be faster and has no filtering. three.co.uk has more filtering (ports and porn I think) and might be slower. 3Internet doesn't seem to work for me on pre-pay sim cards though. Another thing to point out is to use static DNS. Every so often the DHPC server (or possibly the Huawei firmware) gives you 10.11.12.13 which is totally bogus.

  4. IainNo Gravatar Says:
    November 28th, 2008 at 9:18 pm

    @Marius – right, I'll post my adventures once I have them ;)

    @Mattj – Thanks for the tip, I'll keep that in mind. This works well enough for the majority of cases in which I don't want to fiddle around with wires though.

    @Alan – I get errors about it being unable to negotiate with the PPP server when using 3internet sadly. Thanks for the hint about DNS – I'll set that when I next use it.

  5. MattjNo Gravatar Says:
    November 28th, 2008 at 10:23 pm

    I think that the 3internet is for use if you buy the broadband addon. I have internet max, connecting through just the '3'(three.co.uk) access point. My n95 came with just the 2, '3' and 3mms. I will give enabling 3internet when I can get in an area with some coverage :p

    Also, it is just as easy to connect on intrepid, plug in the phone, network manager asks for the network and it just works. Much better than it used to be.

  6. AleksanderNo Gravatar Says:
    November 30th, 2008 at 6:06 pm

    Any hint on how to do it in Ubuntu? Is there a simple GUI tool for that?

  7. Angus BradleyNo Gravatar Says:
    December 12th, 2008 at 12:47 am

    I found 3g on 3 really slow, and thought it was 3's fault.
    Then I tried Ross Barkman's scripts at http://www.taniwha.org.uk/. The speed went from 50kb/s to 450kb/s… I'll post a screenshot on my blog

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