05.09.08
Windows XP Online Through Blackberry Pearl 8100 and T-Mobile
As I don’t always have an Internet connection, being able to get my laptop online through my cell phone (a Blackberry Pearl 8100 on T-Mobile) is quite useful. Here’s how you do it. I presume at this point you’ve already installed the Blackberry Desktop software, and can sync fine over USB.
Determine COM Ports
Right-click on “My Computer” (often found in the Start Menu), and select “Properties”. Click on the “Hardware” tab, and then the Button for “Device Manager”. Expand the section for “Ports (COM & LPT)”. You should see a couple entries here for RIM Virtual Serial Port v2 — for me these were “COM4″ and “COM5″.
Note the COM numbers for these entries. Close out.
Set Up Network Connection
Go to the “Control Panel”, and open up “Network Connections”. (If you have category view enabled, you may have to go to “Network and Internet Connections” first, before being able to select “Network Connections”. Go to “File->New Connection”, which will launch the “New Connection Wizard”. Do not do the Network Setup Wizard — that’s something else.
Click Next. Leave the option as “Connect to the Internet”, and click Next. Select “Set up my connection manually”, and click Next. Select “Connect using a dial-up modem”, and click Next.
At this point it should be asking you to select a device. Make sure to select the entry for one of the COM ports you found above. I noted above that COM ports 4 and 5 were for RIM, and here the only one showing up was COM4, so my choice is pretty clear. Select the correct one, and click Next.
For ISP name, put in whatever is meaningful to you so you know what it’s for. For instance, I called mine “T-Mobile (Blackberry)”. Click Next.
For Phone number, put in the following and click Next: *99#
For “Internet Account Information”, leave the fields blank. Leave “Use this account name and password…” checked, and uncheck the box for “Make this the default Internet connection”. Click Next. That should be the final page of the Connection Wizard, so click Finish.
This will probably pop up the “Connect T-Mobile (Blackberry)” dial-up wizard. Don’t connect yet. Close this out, because we need to make some changes to the modem first.
Go back to “Control Panel”, and go to “Phone and Modem Options”. (If you have Category View enabled, you may have to select “Printers and Other Hardware” first.) On the “Modems” tab, you should see the modem you selected above listed (e.g. “Standard Modem; highlight it and hit Properties.
This will bring up the properties window specific to that modem. On the Advanced tab, there’s a box for “Extra initialization commands”. In here, put the following:
+cgdcont=1,"IP","wap.voicestream.com"
If that doesn’t work, use the following instead:
+cgdcont=1,,"wap.voicestream.com"
OK all the way out, and launch the connection again. You can find it in the Control Panel under Network Connections (again, if you have Category View enabled, you may have to navigate into “Network and Internet Connections” first), under the Dial-up section. Alternatively you may find it under Start->Connect To on the Start Menu, if you have the new style Start Menu enabled.
Click Dial, and it should connect!