A good way may be to use Qt and qt-mobility framework.
With the bearer api you may request a connection, with other Qt classes you can download webpages without taking care of all the mentioned low-level stuff.

And finally, give a try to Qt SDK beta, configure the profile for your n900, select it and with a simple "control-r" you'll see the app automagically cross-compiled and launched directly on the device!

Niko