Laney's blog

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:

I'm coming out of hibernation to celebrate this announcement. Finally I will be able to watch TV in my room again; there's no aerial signal up here.

An early version of the service is available from 9 April.

Woohoo! I'll be trying this. The only downside is that it's apparently only available in the internet channel. It would be much cooler to have an iPlayer icon on the Wii's dashboard. Can't have everything I guess.

I can only laugh at how the ISPs will moan about the increased bandwidth from this. Seriously, it seems that they're only going after the BBC on this one because they have an identifiable target; with filesharing there's no one individual to go after. Shut up and start improving your networks, please. There are only going to be more and more bandwidth-intensive applications like this coming out and ISPs are not going to stop this. They need to roll with it.

I'm sure that most everyone has heard about the Phorm + BT/Virgin Media/TalkTalk debacle by now, but If not here are some useful links. The point of this post is to encourage you to sign this petition over on the PM's website. You'll at least get a response when the petition closes, if nothing else (which seems to be stupidly long for some reason, but hey…)