Babar Haq

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Mobily Internet via Nokia E51 as bluetooth modem

Well consulted too many sites to get this working so cant really mention all of them here :)
I will just put the main one here

AFAIK this was performed on Ubuntu 7.04. So in 8.10 it turned out to be a lot easier.

I will only post the differences here :) Yeah they call it laziness

In step1 you just need to left click the bluetooth icon and select "Set up new device". Make sure bluetooth is activated on your mobile and its publicly viewable. It will give you the code which you need to enter on your mobile to complete the pairing.

Step2 remains exactly the same. Be sure to restart bluetooth service after editing rfcomm.conf
sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart

In Step3 I used wvdial instead of what this guy is using. Since I am familiar with it. Mobily does not require a username/password but I had to put dummy values since wvidal does not accept wvdial.conf with out it.

Here is my wvdial for mobily, Saudi arabia.

[Dialer mobile]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init3 = AT+CGDCONT=, ,"web1"
Modem = /dev/rfcomm0
Phone = *99***1#
Username = A
Password = B
New PPPD = yes
BAUD = 460800
Stupid Mode = 1

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Saturday, February 07, 2009

Mobily vs Jawal

Recently due to some unfortunate circumstances my Jawal STC mobile number was disconnected and I had to change my number. So I had option of going for STC, mobily or Zain. Zain is very new and I was in no mood of experimentation. So I was left with mobily vs Jawal.

People all around, encouraged me to go for mobily. Reason: its economical and services in general are a lot better. So I did.

Well the customer service of mobily is a loooooooot better then STC. Getting connected to a representative in thier call center is lightning fast. They are courteous, yes courtesy in Saudi arabia! Their technical know how is not that great, but I can live with that.

In quality of network, well they don't score that well. Calling Pakistan is a nightmare. It seems like they are making use of VOIP extensively. The receiver will not get your correct number and the voice quality sucks big time.

SMS is another problem. Either the recipient will not get your message or you will not get their replies.

Maybe mobily is economically more viable but if the core technologies (voice/sms) have problems then I think STC wins by large

Update 1st March 2009
Guess what? You cannot call 0800 toll free numbers from mobily :P Since its a STC service I guess it will never allow access from mobily :(

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