Instructions on getting FREE wireless internet from T-Mobile using GPRS

**Arathranar** · 09-03-2005, 07:56 PM

Need some advice.

I currently have a Samsung S105 and a USB cable. It's a real hassle to hook it up to the car PC. I'm thinking of picking up a cheap Ericsson t68i with bluetooth so I came back to this thread to see if there were any success stories (didn't see any mention of it).

But now I find you guys have had success with a prepaid sim so I'm wondering about doing the above + getting a prepaid sim to go in it. Since I've found I usually can't receive calls when using GPRS, that's very tempting. And it means I could just leave the phone in the car permanently. I could then do really cool stuff like trickle download my home music collection so my car is always 100% up to date. And I could upload my gps location to my home pc for every journey I take. And I could probably set it up so my car pc turns on if I ring the phone to let me track the car - that could be very useful if my cars ever stolen. Very tempting!

So how does prepaid work? What's this gold rewards? How often do you have to refill? What's the minimum you can refill? $100 a year would certainly be a lot cheaper than an extra line (~$10) plus the $5 t-zones charge ($60+tax / yr)! At $40/yr more than I currently pay and given I'd get a dedicated car pc phone internet connection - I'm *definitely* game!

Finally - has anyone had success with a t68i + bluetooth connection to the PC for this?

**Arathranar** · 09-03-2005, 08:03 PM

P.S. Any other cheap bluetooth phones I could get off ebay for this? The t68i was my favorite just because I like small phones and my original plan was to switch from my Samsung s105 to the t68i in order to just be able to get my car pc to automatically connect when the phone is still in my pocket.

**PURDooM** · 09-05-2005, 09:40 PM

Has anyone found out if the connection is speedy enough on these wireless connections to say listen to shoutcast winamp stations at 128kb bitrate?

**WebDog** · 09-07-2005, 10:50 AM

Originally Posted by PURDooM

Has anyone found out if the connection is speedy enough on these wireless connections to say listen to shoutcast winamp stations at 128kb bitrate?

I dont think you will get that speed from wireless, maybe it would work from EDGE...

Im posting this from my laptop using my v600 and a usb cable ive had for months but never could find the drivers for...

But its pretty fast, a lot better then dial up.

**Arathranar** · 09-10-2005, 03:49 PM

Well, this is bizarre. I got myself a t68i and a BT dongle. And on my laptop it works just fine - can pair the devices and connect to the internet through the phone with no difficulties at all. It seems a lot faster than my samsung s105 via usb/serial interestingly. The samsung could never load www.msn.com even if you left it indefinitely. Via the t68i it loads up in about 5s.

However, on my car pc I've had a nightmare of a time. First of all, the bt dongle wouldn't work when plugged in via the hub I had in the car (even if I added a separate powered hub in between!) - it would either fail to detect the phone, fail in the middle of pairing or pair but then fail when I try and use the modem. Finally I took the hub out and confirmed the same problem if I tried to use it with my (previously working) laptop.

But it seems to work when plugged directly into the m/b which got rid of all the bizarre failures. But if I connect to the Internet, it seems to succeed - dials up, gets an IP but then never receives any data. No errors, just no data. I can immediately repair the phone with my laptop (same bt dongle) and it'll connect to the internet just fine.

I'm totally stumped and really *****ed off. I'm beginning to wonder if repaving my car pc will help!

**Arathranar** · 09-11-2005, 10:21 PM

Woohoo! I tried some more PCs and found that the only one that actually worked was my laptop. The other 3 I'd tried (including car PC) were all running Windows Media Center and the one I thought I'd succeeded on was just in the strange connected but not connected state.

So I set up a new PC with Windows XP Pro and had no problems getting a working GRPS Internet connection. So I pulled out my car PC, plugged in a laptop cd drive and reinstalled it with Windows XP Pro. I now have a working GPRS Internet connection in my car now!!

I am now both very pleased and very ****ed off about all the time I wasted yesterday because Windows Media Center didn't work properly.

**Arathranar** · 09-13-2005, 12:48 AM

I'm getting there.

I think I've got it working so that laptops in my car connecting the WAP of my PC now get automatically configured (if IE is configured to do so) to use the correct proxy. Here's what I did that seems to have got that working:
1. Installed IIS on car PC (part of XP Pro but not installed by default).
2. Copied a wpad.dat file that specifies the proxy to the web site root.
3. Set up hosts & lmhosts files (not sure which is needed) to point the host 'wpad' at 192.168.0.1
4. Set up XP's internet connection sharing of the T-mobile GPRS connection to the local network via the wireless.
5. Set the alternate IP for the wireless to be 192.168.0.1 - required to get the DHCP to work. Wait a minute for it to take effect

.
6. Make the wireless act as a WAP instead of a station (this is still a manual step since it doesn't persist across a hibernate

).

Somewhere along the way it started working although Outlook didn't seem to want to connect over this solution whereas it has been working fine when the bluetooth dongle was on the laptop. That might just be the exchange server being a bit too slow though.

**hateeecs** · 09-13-2005, 01:31 PM

Hey All,

I'm trying to jump on this bandwagon as well.

I am running an Aircard 750, with a TM2G sim. I am able to create a dial up connection using the instructions in this thread. I am able to connect to the network and obtain an ip address.

Next, I set the proxy for the connection to be
216.155.165.50 port 8080 in firefox.

However, when I try and access a site I am prompted to save a file. Upon inspection of this file, it is simply some XML saying that I don't have access to this feature. Any ideas?

Thanks,
-Chris

**Arathranar** · 09-13-2005, 01:40 PM

Well, you could actually read the thread and find the answer yourself or you could wait to be spoon fed.

<spoonfeeding>
You need to pay T-Mobile at least $4.99 (may now be 5.99) for more than the free T-Zones access. If you only have the free T-zones, you'll get an XML file telling you that you have pay them money to get the service.
</spoonfeeding>

**hateeecs** · 09-13-2005, 02:10 PM

Originally Posted by Arathranar

Well, you could actually read the thread and find the answer yourself or you could wait to be spoon fed.

<spoonfeeding>
You need to pay T-Mobile at least $4.99 (may now be 5.99) for more than the free T-Zones access. If you only have the free T-zones, you'll get an XML file telling you that you have pay them money to get the service.
</spoonfeeding>

Nice attitude. I did read the thread. It is more than 10 pages long with many posts like the one you quote that seem to contradict each other. (Rafster's posts seem to indicate TM2G success) The XML files does not say "pay us money to get service" it says "feature not in plan". I realize there are similar, but they are not the same.