This article shall detail the steps to setup, configure and begin using the Huawei E156 HSDPA (3G) USB Stick on Linux (fondly called by them BSNL employees as a ‘Data Card’).
On Windows, one generally uses the bundled ‘Huawei Mobile Partner’ software which does wonderful things like read messages, compute statistics, etc. There isn’t a similar software on Linux providing all of those under one roof, however.
First off, you need to create a BSNL 3G dialer profile, and you would require a software known as wvdial. Install it by either of these commands, in the Terminal application:
# On Ubuntu sudo aptitude install wvdial # On ArchLinux sudo pacman -S wvdial
Now as root (or using sudo), open the file: /etc/wvdial.conf
# If you use GNOME, try: sudo gedit /etc/wvdial.conf # If on KDE, try: sudo kwrite /etc/wvdial.conf
Paste into your editor, the following lines:
[Dialer bsnlnet] Modem Type = Analog Modem Phone = *99# ISDN = 0 Baud = 460800 Username = " " Password = " " Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0 Init1 = ATZ Init2 = at+cgdcont=1,"ip","bsnlnet" Stupid Mode = 1
Save the changes and close the editor. Now to get connected, you have to ask the wvdial command to start a particular connection. So simply do, on each startup:
wvdial bsnlnet
And lo, you’re online with blazing 3G speeds!
Note: You may be supposed to use a different APN like bsnlsouth sometimes (instead of bsnlnet or etc.), so change that in the highlighted line.
