I have been using Alltel's phone as modem for several months now via bluetooth connection. But starting this weekend I can still connect but can not get any websites to load! I have ried restarting the machines, the phone, retyping the password...nothing. I call alltel's tech line (not very helpful as they said that they don't really support the way I have it hooked-up), they advised that I delete and redo the setup. I tried this on my N810 first. Now my Samsung Hue will only pair with object push. Is any on else having this problem? This just started Saturday.

Thanks

update:

I have my internet back! Still don't know what happened, though. I guess Alltel was having problems.

I used my Alltel phone as modem service over the weekend with no difficulties. If I had to wager a guess, I'd bet that they were doing some work on integrating the Alltel and Verizon networks which temporarily brought down the connection in your area.

I also had a problem recently - worked the next day.

$teve

I have had this happen, but it has been down for a couple of weeks now. When I called Alltel, I got the same answer about them not supporting using the phone as a modem with Bluetooth instead of the USB tether. After hearing that others have had problems, I wonder if it is still down in my area or if when I uninstalled and reinstalled my phone when I first discovered it wasn't working, if I messed something up. I can connect via the USB tether but the bluetooth that has worked for several months won't work now. Has anyone else been down for this long? When I connect via the USB thether, I can't connect to my company firewall (why it works with bluetooth and not the USB I don't understand) and check my email.

Anyone have any advice?

Call their tech line and ask to speak to their "advanced" tech support. They did upgrade their network over Thanksgiving weekend and it didn't go very smoothly. My internet had gone down again after I posted last. Called tech, got replacement, and when it did the same thing, they had me speak to the advanced tech support and they fixed the problem on their end.

When I talked to tech support, they said they couldn't help me because they don't support connecting over bluetooth. Are you connecting over Bluetooth? What did they replace and what did they have to fix on their end to make it work for you?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me!

I had the same problem with T-Mobile. I could connect to the GPRS and ping local IPs (10.x.x.x network), but I could not access the internet, no webpages, and no pinging of external IPs. Once I got Skype somehow to connect and make a call over GPRS, but that was the exception. Dropped them after two days! Don't pay for a service if you don't get everything you want out of it: assuming Alltel is trying to block as much as possible.

The problem wasn't with my phone and they told me the same drill about not supporting what we are doing theu bluetooth. But what it is, it's that they don't have any idea how it works this way so they can't help with it. That's why they had me talk to their advanced tech instead of the "normal" tech.

Arrgh!

The problem came back, very annoying. Tried all the obvious things ... no luck.

Finally called Alltel. I had to be persistent, and polite. Finally got through to a fellow geek (geekette?) named Jenny. She was smart, knew how to sling the slang. Was not miffed that the call was regarding an N810. We tried various things, no dice. She then put me on hold, talked to another department, and had them make "a change to the way the data was sent/received to/from my phone". She said it was done by Level 3 and she did not really understand what was changed, that it varied on a case-by-case basis.

But, it worked!

Here is the possibly significant part. When it was failing, ifconfig showed my ip as 166.166.198.210 , which is part of an IP space used by WIRELESSDATASPCO.ORG, and the p-t-p IP was part of the Sprint PCS network (apparently they have some kind of cooperative agreement with Alltel). After she fixed the problem, ifconfig showed me with an ip of 98.132.169.80, p-t-p = 75.116.236.198 . BOTH of those IPs are registered to Alltel!

BTW, it also failed using my phone with a USBcable to my Windows XP laptop, so that proves it had nothing to do with the N810 - I explained that to jenny and she actually took that into consideration while working with me.

So, if you have a problem, insist that it can work, demonstrate that it fails with Windows, and tell them that they need to make the change that results in the IPs being 100% alltel.

Hope this helps someone else,

Steve