Wireless internet through your cell phone?

[vpjimmyd]

It would be awesome to be able to connect my laptop to the internet through my cell phone signal. Can you imagine using the internet everywhere you get a cell phone signal? 

I've heard of people using the SIM card from their cell phone in the laptop somehow. Does anyone know what kind of product you would use for that or if that's even how it works? Also, which cell phones have SIM cards? Thanks in advance.

[Jonathan]

There are a few ways to do it.  First of all you need to make sure you have an unlimited data plan on your service or you'll rack up some pricey phone bills.

T-Mobile and ATT / Cingular are the companies that usually use SIM cards.  If you have a phone with a sim card you can use a USB Sim card modem like the Falcom Samba 75. 

No for the more impressive way to do it.  If you have a bluetooth capable phone and a bluetooth capable laptop (or a bluetooth adapter to make it bluetooth capable) you can just connect them through bluetooth and set up an internet connection through the phone.  If you are using windows this is generally a very easy thing to set up.  If you do it this way you don't even have to pull your cell phone out of your pocket, let alone yank the SIM card out of it.

[sam-i-am]

This is easy in OS X as well, as long as your phone supports the PAN bluetooth profile (DUN will work too, with some work).  You need to have 10.4.9 or later for PAN to work.

Just pair your bluetooth phone and at the end of the pairing process if your phone supports PAN it will ask you if you want to use its internet connection.  Tick the option and now you will have a "Connect to network on ..." option in your bluetooth menu. 

It's also worth noting that many phones lock this feature out.

[lewisg]

Yeah, I'm not sure if it's been locked out or what, but I've never been able to tether my Blackjack and the laptop through Bluetooth. I've had luck via the USB sync cable that came with it, but not wirelessly. It's still really cool as we have 3G speeds through the area here and I've clocked downloads at 120KB + over my phone. Pretty sweet, I'd say.

[Jonathan]

I know Kris (Erik) has his working on his laptop, he may be able to provide some more information about getting them to connect via bluetooth.  It seems to work well for him.

[mark]

Just a note.   Verizon has this disabled on all the phones they can.    They castrate pretty much everything they get their hands on, which is disappointing. 

I asked some Verizon reps about it and three of them told me they didn't think it was possible, and acted like it was a silly thing to even want.  (then of course they tried to sell me on their $90 USB package and $60-a-month data plan)

[Jonathan]

Who wouldn't want to be able to do that?  It's an amazing option. Verizon just wants you to have to pay out your ears for a phone and a cellular modem.

[prestor]

You should try Pdanet http://www.junefabrics.com/palmnet/

This let me pair my bluetooth phone with my laptop and connect to the internet. It worked pretty well, but I probably got disconnected every 30 minutes or so which wasn't cool.

I finally just bit the bullet and got an EV-DO PCMCIA card - I've been really happy with it. It's weird, if I ever have to use it at work it's really slow, but when I use it up in SLC it seems almost as fast as my cable internet.

[Kris]

I have the Sprint Samsung A-900 (The Blade) and I use Bluetooth all the time, since my USB cable doesn't let me charge my phone at the same time I am connecting to the internet.  The trick is that you need to set up the connection manually, which means you need to get your computer to recognize your phone as a bluetooth modem and then set up manual dialing rules.  For Sprint all you usually need is to dial #777, and no username or password is required.  It works great, with no difference in speed for the USB connection.

[jillatuca323]

I followed the directions on how to connect to the internet through my att blackberry pearl.  It will connect but almost immediately I get an "error: 734".  Does anyone know what the **** this means?

[mark]

What specifically is throwing the error?  Is it a Windows error, is it on the blackberry, or is an error in some of the software you are using.

Also, some details on the computer might help find the problem (OS, make and model etc.)

[HAMMERHANDLE]

So how exactly do you set-up your cellphone to connect to your laptop so you can use the data package on your cellphone to receive the internet on your laptop?  I have a blackberry pearl and Dell Inspiron laptop running XP.  Both my phone and laptop have bluetooth.  Thanks in advance for your help.  I know nothing about computers by the way.

[Jordan]

There are several guides on the interenet that will give good step-by-step instructions. I would recommend looking over the one at  http://www.conniq.com/WinXPNetworking_Bluetooth_cellphone_modem.htm. Since all phones are different, there may be slight discrepencies in the setup, but the basics are all there.

Thanks,

Jordan

[chippydip]

I have never tried it. Best to get a tiny laptop for around 250 bucks that is small because it has the atom processor.