N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

Hi,
Is anyone doing the above. I have a 'need' to change my current mobile supplier and looking at Three they offer Unlimited* 3G access. This would save me hunting down non existent free WiFi zones in central london. I was planning on using the 3g phone as my BT modem. Works fine with t-mobile but at 2.5G only, and the data costs.....i mean it really costs ! :)

Andrew
p.s. don't tell the Wife she has a low (W)AF for all things gadget

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

3 don't offer an unlimited tarrif, do they? Internet tarrifs on 3 appear to cost a minimum of £15/month capped at 56Mb/month.

T-Mobile do offer unlimited 3G (also with HSDPA) access, it's called Web'n'Walk Plus for £12.50/month and T-Mobile probably have better national coverage than 3.

If you know a better (pay monthly) deal on 3 I'd like to know! :)

My current plan is to switch to T-Mobile when the Nokia N95 arrives (hopefully April) - I'll be transferring my O2 account to T-Mobile on Flext25 £25/month voice tarrif along with Web'n'Walk Plus £12.50/month.

I could save £5/month and go with the standard Web'n'Walk, but it's against the Term&Conditions to use this tarrif with a laptop (ie. not allowed to use the phone as a modem with the N800).

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

I have an N73 on Three and I pay £2.50/Mo for 10 MB just for the 3G data; my 770 works well through it and it's fine for car use and Maemo Mapper, but it goes quickly for mainstream browsing.

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

This is not a direct response to your question but I think it's tangentially relevant. I suspect that reports of the death of the hotspot have been somewhat exaggerated and that genuinely "unlimited" data plans are still relatively expensive.

It seems that The Cloud has a special offer for Nokia tablet owners of hotspot access for a tenner a month. If I were still in London, I think I'd find this more attractive than 3G. http://www.thecloud.net/content.asp?...=4&content=236

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

A £10/month Hotspot special offer still doesn't compare well with a £12.50/month unlimited 3G/HSDPA connection, IMHO. To be honest, hotspots should be offered on a pay-as-you-go basis, or priced no more than £3-£4/month - it's not as if you would or are even able to use a hotspot 24x7 as you can a 3G connection, so the hotspot pricing should reflect this.

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

Millhouse,
I think the X series on the 3 network is unlimited data, also with 700 mins talk. Although looking at it there is no mention of using the phone as a BT modem, i'm going to a 3 store tomorrow to confuse the staff.

Andrew

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

I've just checked the X-Series T&C's and it specifically states you are not to use your X-Series phone as a modem, so it looks like the X-Series tarrif is the same as T-Mobile Web'n'Walk (£7.50/month, no modem usage). Also note that "Unlimited data" is no such thing on X-Series (this isn't unique to X-Series - caps apply on all networks). I admit a 1GB cap is almost certainly enough per month for most people, particularly when no modem use is permitted, but may not be sufficient for laptop/modem usage.

For unlimited (3GB/month) modem use, T-Mobile Web'n'Walk Plus (£12.50) is the best tariff to my knowledge. The T-Mobile tariff also permits you to use any phone of your choice, while the 3 X-Series tariff seems to limit you to a small selection of phones.

In my opinion, T-Mobile Flext25 (18 month contract, £25/month, £60 allowance [10p/text message => 600 messages]) with Web'n'Walk Plus (£12.50/month, 3GB cap) is a better deal than the modem-only, 1GB capped X-Series at £40/month.

:)

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

Just for the info of those reading this, I've been using the basic T-Mobile Web'n'Walk (£7.50*) since October 2006, in a bluetooth phone - with both my laptop and my N800 (and 770 before that).

T-mobile haven't complained at all... so I think that if you're sensible with the 3 X-Series you probably won't have issues either.

A final point - someone here said that T-mobile could have better UK coverage than 3. If we're talking specifically 3G data coverage (and not 2G voice) then I've found T-mobile's coverage poor. I suspect that 3 have better coverage when we're talking about 3G data.

* - Note, you also have to pay an additional £7.50 / month for their most basic voice package (known as 'SIM Only') which gives 50 voice minutes, which I don't use at all. So comes to £15.00 / month. If you don't make many calls and can put up with poorer 3G coverage than say Orange or Voda, then I think it is an excellent package - please don't read this is a criticism.

Dave

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

Oh... this package only has a 1 month minimum term, so if T-mobile did tell you to stop using a laptop, then you could just cancel with no lock-in.

I'm interested in the experiences of anybody using a X-series tariff for data on an N800 / laptop, as I'm thinking of switching for improved coverage.

Dave

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

You might be interested in this post from a UK mobile phone forum where the poster is referring to his T-Mobile Web'n'Walk account usage:

So they definately know what you're doing - whether they do anything about it in future is another matter. :)

It strikes me that the network providers may have colluded with the phone manufacturers and a phone connecting for normal data (on-device WAP and Web browsing) connects differently than the same phone when connecting as a modem. Perhaps the phone passes a different configuration code to the network when it connects as a modem, meaning that the networks don't have to mess about monitoring ports, usage levels and protocol signatures etc. to determine if you're abusing your T&Cs.

If I ran a network with two different data plans I'd certainly get the phone to give it's owner away and save me doing the hard work! :)

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

[QUOTE=Milhouse;44574]
So they definately know what you're doing - whether they do anything about it in future is another matter. :)
[OUOTE]

Manager @T-mobile advise me best option for N800 may be sim only @£7.50 and web&walk @£7.50 cancel option after 30 days and 50min talk per month.
Tempting if anyone can advise on cheapy phone to pair with N800.
Concern expressed if pairing done with laptop but when he saw N800 happy to advise on sim only option.

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

Hi there, I have just been reading through all the posts above as I live in the UK & have just bought an N800.

I am also looking at getting a T-Mobile phone that I can use as a Bluetooth modem on the web n walk plus tariff. But when I went in to discuss this with staff at the Leeds shop they said that they did not think you could use the phone as a modem via Bluetooth, but only via USB conector. Does anyone know if this is true or not, if not is it easy to set up the modem via Bluetooth (I am not very technically minded). I don't want to go & take out a contract that might not work & was hoping that T-Mobile could have reassured me that it would work.

Has anyone got this set up & working?

And help would be very much appreciated.

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

[QUOTE=proterra;47570]I'd have gotten his approval in writing, and in triplicate. The T-Mobile automated systems won't know you are using an N800 when they begin to throttle your download speed... but as long as you restrict your access to web surfing and T-Mobile don't detect "laptop" usage because of the way the phone connects to the network (ie. they can detect tethered modem usage as opposed to the internal browser data usage) you might be ok, but I suspect they can detect whenever you tether to a laptop.

Me, I think the manager is leading you up a garden path. :(

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

What phone was it - which model?

Most phones (apart from those running Windows Mobile) can be used to connect to the internet over Bluetooth with the N800. As long as the phone offers the Bluetooth Dial Up Networking (DUN) Profile you'll be up and running in a couple of minutes using the N800 connection wizard.

The problem with Windows Mobile phones is that they don't all support the Bluetooth DUN Profile (most of them support the Bluetooth Personal Area Network (PAN) Profile) and require a lot of pfaffing about in order to get them to work with the N800 (it's possible, but a pain in the @rse).

Since the WnW+ tarrif is "unlimited" (actually 3GB/month) you want to make sure you make the most of it, so my advice would be to get a decent 3G phone that supports HSDPA. HSDPA will ensure excellent download rates comparable with broadband (over 1.5Mbits/s). Once you have the phone I believe you have to contact T-Mobile customer services to have HSDPA enabled on your account (it doesn't cost anything more).

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

I finally tracked down the Bluetooth DUN compatability list for the 770/N800... unfortunately the migration to the new maemo.org look & feel has meant the page is fairly unreadable. :(

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

Has anyone actually got their N800 working with a phone using the 3 service? I can't get mine to work with my Sony Ericsson k800i. My iBook and TomTom 710 both work with it (with some intermittent connection issues) but the N800 doesn't have any joy at all.
How can I see the PPP logs, so I can figure out what might be going wrong? I've seen others refer to theirs in bugzilla on maemo.org, but can't find a log, or discover how to ensure that one is created.

I've tried APN of three.co.uk, and user/pass set to guest/guest or <none>/<none> and a dial number of *99***1#.

I think the iBook (Mac OS X 10.4.9) uses DYN, and the TomTom 710 uses PAN.

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

I think you've got two options, follow the instructions in comment 5 of bug #1203 or alternatively try and install hci-dump as discussed in bug #865 (this latter bug began life on the 770 and hci-dump may or may not work on the N800).

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

Thanks. That's helped immensely. I can now see where my connection attempts are failing. Here's an extract from my iBook's PPP log, showing a failed connection attempt (which happens enough to be annoying) followed by a successful connection attempt.

Here is a connection attempt on the n800. Note that it fails the same way as the iBook does, but the n800 never connects successfully.



I'm not sure if the problems I'm having are with the Sony Erricsson K800i being flakey at DUN and marginally palatable to the iBook, but not at all to the n800, or something else. As an aside, and possibly more on topic, I've found 3's 3G/UMTS service to be be pretty flakey at replying to ConfReqs, often leaving me stranded with a link layer connection but no IP address. All in all, quite unsatisfactory, but I'd like to get the n800 connecting at least as well as the iBook, which is better than nothing.

I wouldn't automatically pin this on the phone, as I had similar issues with GPRS on a Z600 with my iBook before (and a very sucky data service from O2). Any idea's what might be going wrong?

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

I'm connecting to a Sony Ericsson W950i on O2 and I don't have any "Supplementary AT Commands" specified. You appear to have AT+CGDCONT=1,"ip","three.co.uk" which is where it's failing, have you tried clearing this in Connectivity->Connections->Advanced->Other? I added the same supplementary AT command to my BT DUN connection (using o2.co.uk instead of three.co.uk) and it immediately began to fail.

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

Thanks for responding again Milhouse. As it happens, there are no supplementary AT commands listed (and I've never added any). I've manually configured for the 3 network as its not listed in the wizard that appeared when I added the phone.

Out of curiosity, I deleted the phone and selected O2 Mobile Web in the wizard after I added the phone back in the bluetooth devices. When I try and connect (expecting certain failure), I still see the same format AT command being sent , but this time with mobile.o2.co.uk. So, I'm surprised that you don't see it in your logs.

I'm not that familiar with modem command strings & scripts so I'm a bit clueless about this. I will note however, that I'm using Ross Barkman's modem scripts on my iBook, from http://www.taniwha.org, which seems to be the definitive Mac resource in this area, and the same command is used in them. Of course, the Mac doesn't connect all the time (maybe 50% of attempts), so I'm not sure there's anything to be learned from that.

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

Yeah, it's possibly being added automatically by the phone - I don't have logging enabled so couldn't confirm if my phone is adding it or not, I just threw it out there in case you'd added it yourself. Obviously it's needed. I'll set logging up on my phone and post them up.

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

It may not be exactly equivalent but below is what's in the PPP chat script for my Linux laptop connecting to GPRS on an old Nokia 6310i on Vodafone.

As you can see, in the AT+CGDCONT line, the string after "IP" is "internet" rather than an operator's domain name.

My N800 will also connect via same phone however I haven't looked at the log files to see what it sends.

----------------------------------------------------------------

SAY "Press CTRL-C to close the connection at any stage!" \
SAY "\ndefining PDP context...\n" \
OK ATH \
OK ATE1 \
OK 'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet","",0,0' \
OK ATD*99# \
TIMEOUT 22 \
SAY "\nwaiting for connect...\n" \
CONNECT "" \
SAY "\nConnected." \
SAY "\nIf the following ppp negotiations fail,\n" \
SAY "try restarting the phone.\n"

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

Not sure when I'll be able to install syslogd as maemo.org appears to be offline and I can't download the deb from the Nokia repositories... I'm sure it'll be back tomorrow, or it could be a problem at my end (no other sites seem to be affected).

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

This is the output in /var/log/syslog from the moment of selecting my phone connection in the Connection dialog to the point where it is connected in the UI. The phone connection is listed as "O2 Mobile Web" in the connection dialog.

I've split it over two messages as it has exceeded the 10K message limit...

Part 1:

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

Part 2:

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

I have read the above posts, I need help hooking up to the Three network with my N800, haven't maaged it yet. Could somone please tell me how to get the bluetooth link to work ( I can pair the two ) and use my Nokia E65 as a modem?

Re: N800 - UK with "Three" Network 3G Mobile
 

As an update, I finally managed to get Bluetooth DUN working with my 3 service, using my Sony Erricsson K800i.

The final steps I took were as follows. Note that I'm not entirely sure what really made it start working.

1) Update the K800i to latest firmware from Sony Erricsson. Note that trying to do this in a Windows XP virtual machine under VMWare is fruitless, I had to find a real Windows box.

2) Use an alternative data account (not the 3-locked one) on the phone, using CID:5. Set DUN to dial *99***5#.

I wish I could be more specific on what really fixed it for me. I'm reluctant to mess with it now, as I remember the first rule of engineering.

The CID change is my favourite theory. It fits best with what I saw in the system logs, as the modem commands failed immediately after dialling. I never tried this before flashing the phone.

Anyway, woohoo 8-)