I recently aquired a PowerBook, and one of the first things I wanted to do was to get it to use Bluetooth to dial into the internet. Sure, I have wireless ethernet at home, and cable, and whatever. But what about when I’m out in the boonies?
Anyway, the task was, indeed, much larger than I expected, which is why I’m now typing it up. Hopefully, Google will find this post and future people trying to do the same thing will be helped out. The technical specs matter a bit, but there is general information (and terminology!) here, too, on getting your connection to work. I’m using a PowerBook, a Nokia 6820, and Cingular is my provider. Sadly, even with my free dial-up into the University’s modem pool, there’s still no such thing as free internet, but this comes close.
The first step, of course, is getting your phone to talk to the Mac. This is pretty straightforward, and it can be done via the Bluetooth Setup Assistant. You’ll have to type in a passkey on your phone that the computer sends it, and then you’re in business. Nokias do not, at this time, sync with iSync, but that might change. We don’t care about that, anyway.
The second step is the doozy. If you go to the Bluetooth control panel, click on your phone, and click on “Configure…,” it’ll ask to chat with your phone again, and then, at the bottom, under “Access the Internet with your phone’s data connection,” are two options: “Dial a specific access number” and “Use a direct, higher speed connection.” The latter lets you set your phone up for GPRS. That means that you’ll use the faster “MediaNET” or whatever connection, but you’ll pay for every kilobyte. This is the version Cingular was pushing on me. If you have, somehow, the unlimited data plan, which is $40 a month, then go ahead and use this. Follow the directions here to set everything up. I don’t know that you need to download the special Nokia 3G script, but those scripts that are available at Taniwha are only for GPRS.
Though GPRS did work, grad students ain’t got no $40 a month, especially not if this project is mostly just so that they can have dialup for this one day when they’ll be out in nature. I wanted to be able to dial in straight to the University. Fuck GPRS; I chose “Dial a specific access number.”
Punch everything in, dial, wait.
The phone dials the number, a little “D” appears next to the phone number on the phone, and then the call is immediately dropped. “No carrier detected.” Change settings around, etc., nothing. Online, I read you had to turn the data setting on at Cingular, so…
The third step is dealing with customer service. I called Cingular, and they were completely unhelpful. I explained that I wanted to use bluetooth to dial into an ISP, and not to use GPRS. Impossible. I’d have to buy a “PC Card” (PCI?) in order to do that. I refused. Also, I was told that the data usage was too high to do what I wanted to do, and that the only way I could do it was with a PC Data cable (unavailable for the Mac, of course). Actually, my first call was just to ask what the GPRS settings (as noted above) were, and the operator couldn’t tell me even that, saying I had to install the PC Suite for Nokia, and it would tell me.
I was starting to price the unlimited GPRS setting, when I thought I’d give Nokia a call, for fun.
“Yeah, what you need is to activate the Circuit Switched Data. It’s not a big deal at all, and we tell people to do it all the time. Just tell Cingular that’s what you want.”
I took the Nokia appreciation survey after the call just so that I could give it all 5s.
Call Cingular back. This time, instead of going to tech support, I went to billing. I asked to have “CSD” activated on my phone.
“…”
I explained that Nokia said everything was lined up and ready to go, and that they said that Cingular does this stuff all the time. 41 minutes later, the guy was all set. Yes, there is a Circuit Switched Data feature. If you google it and Cingular, it looks like it’s only available for gov’t employess. (Well, hopefully future google searches will return this page!) It costs $3.99/month, as does, it seems, everything that Cingular can’t figure out how to price. Furthermore, the minutes come out of my Anytime minutes, so I can’t dial during the weekends and use my unlimited plan to download stuff. Finally, it’s only a 14.4 connection (GPRS is much faster), but it’s an order of magnitude cheaper, no?
The fourth step is to order CSD, turn the phone on and off, and it works!
The guy at Cingular told me that, for any future questions, I should ask to be transferred to the Data Support Team. He had to call three people before anyone knew what the hell CSD was. Additionally, Cingular is obligated to ask you if you have the PC Data cable and if you have the software to connect. I said that no, I didn’t, but from how I described my situation to Nokia, all that was left was the lack of the CSD. I don’t know if that was just to try and sell me shit, but the guy backed off when I explained that Nokia told me this was Cingular’s fault.
Recap: It’s impossible, using Cingular, to get free dial-up internet with your Bluetooth phone as a modem. For $3.99 a month, however, you can get a blistering 14.4 connection to whatever dialup pool you already use (MSN, AOL, NetZero, whatver), as long as you enable Circuit Switched Data (CSD) on your account. The general terminology here should work for other phones and other providers.
June 30th, 2005 at 0:40
wait, just even try getting to the next stage…getting your cellie to check your email. In kuwait, it was a relative breeze. In the post-modern US, you’d be lucky if your 6820 got stolen in a club, which is what happened to yours truly. Moral of the story, its no blackberry, never meant to be, and never will be.
June 30th, 2005 at 9:09
This is a somewhat misplaced comment, but I thought it might benefit from a public posting. In the baseball box score for last night’s Rangers game the following appears: “B. Shouse (H, 5)”.
What is an “H”? Is it a “handoff” or something? Have we created a stat to track the success of middle-relief as well now? Will we have league-leaders in “H” and potential Cy Young winners racking up infinity “H”’s? This glorification of relief pitching needs to stop. As Smoltz proved this year, any reliever worth his salt would rather be a starter. Without even knowing what this “H” is, I deem it unworthy of a place in the box score.
June 30th, 2005 at 9:27
H is a hold. Yes, it’s a dumb stat. My fantasy league tracked them last year. It sucked.
July 26th, 2005 at 10:59
Excellent, Finally an answer to my question, “Yes, I need CSD turned on, but how the hell do I do it?”. Can’t believe google found this post but I’m sure glad it did. Thank you for taking the time to put this up.
September 1st, 2005 at 22:00
Thanks – this is helpful. Nonetheless… I just switched from verizon to cingular (mostly because cingular is currently the ONLY provider with service in my hometown which I often visit, but that just a tangent…). Verizon has a very nice, eazy way to connect to their uber-slow data network and it’s free and you don’t have to maintain a dial-up acct elsewhere. I guess didn’t do my research when assumeing that this was something most carriers would do. GRRRR.
November 23rd, 2005 at 20:17
i think its so ridiculous that a person cant make a freakin phone call just because its a call to a computer. im kinda angry now.
January 12th, 2006 at 7:28
Thanks for the great instructions on CSD with the Mac. I unfortunately could not get past step 2. (The second step is the doozy. If you go to the Bluetooth control panel, click on your phone, and click on “Configure…,” it’ll ask to chat with your phone again, and then, at the bottom, under “Access the Internet with your phone’s data connection,” are two options:). When I go to configure, the option for Access teh internet with your phone is grayed out. I am using OS 10.3.9, does this matter? Any suggestions?
Thank You,
Tom
tom@drcristello.com
PS I contacted Cingular about activating CSD and spoke with 3 people, not one knew anything about CSD. Today I am going to try my luck at a Cingular store.
January 12th, 2006 at 17:53
FollowUp to last post. I was able to get CSD working and connected to my ISP via my Treo. Now I need to figure out how to tether the treo to my laptop.
January 12th, 2006 at 18:00
Tom:
I suspect my laptop came shipped with 10.4 on it, and I don’t have a 10.3.9 machine around to play with, so I can’t really offer much in the way of advice. If you have a bluetooth control panel, much around in there. Under the network control panel, “Bluetooth” shows up as an option for connecting to the network, along with “internal modem” and “built-in ethernet” and whatever else. If it’s not showing up that way for you, then I don’t know.
It’s possible that the treo is among the devices the mac cannot connect to?
February 22nd, 2006 at 1:20
I just switched from TMobile to Cingular. I’m glad I found this site so I can enable CSD. CSD is needed for the SecureGSM PocketPC/Smartphone program I’m testing out.
March 2nd, 2006 at 16:19
Just spoke with cingular.
Was informed that CSD was dropped as an option at the end of 2005.
Those that already had it enabled will keep it.
Those that did not have it yet, cannot get it.
Wish I had found this article before new year’s.
I don’t think (since they don’t/didn’t even publish the CSD service to the public) that allowing customers to have CSD is going to hurt Cingular’s bottom line – in detracting from data plan subscribers.
What a waste, can’t even make a simple data connection with one of the world’s most advanced phones – on a technicality of a restricted simple, low-level service.
If anyone has any good news for me, email me – 4D@direcway.com
March 10th, 2006 at 12:13
As far as I know, Cingular still allows new CSD signup. I just added CSD on my Razr around Feb 2006. The rep has no idea what it was initially. She went through a feature list and found it and enabled it. Dial-up works 5 seconds later.
However, the speed is not 14.4K but 9.6K (single data channel). For my Razr, it is enough for Opera Mini to check stock quote and Yahoo email. I also tried to connect to my Dell x50v via bluetooth using Opera Mobile 8.5 Beta2. It is slow but usable in emergency situations. I am happy that for $3.99/month, I can access Yahoo email, Google Local (map and driving directions, and weather), and other website.
April 11th, 2006 at 12:46
Hi. So, now is April 2006, is CSD still available with Clingular or not? I need CSD to send faxes via my phone, and couldn’t find another way than CSD to do this. Thanks for any and all update.
April 13th, 2006 at 13:07
I have just spent two days trying to get this to work with my vodafone 6820 in England. Your page provided the important bit ( phone talking to mac ) which Vodafone somehow forgot to mention. Ross Barkman’s page helped a lot too, I didn’t understand the scripts thing at all, but managed it nevertheless.
Thanks alot.