CELL MODEMS

A friend bought a new PDA and offered me his old one at a price I couldn’t refuse. I still feel the wisest strategy, as I mentioned in a previous column, is to wait several months until combination ultra-light portables with digital cameras, radios and MP3 players come attached. Still, for 100 shekels ($22) how could anyone refuse?

I looked for a method of connecting a PDA or laptop to the Internet without having to use Wifi or regular Ethernet connection. Why not a cellphone? My phone is all set up for Internet; at the press of a button I can surf the Web. Was there any way I could transfer that connection to my laptop or PDA?

Orange, my cellphone service supplier, does indeed have several GPRS modems designed for laptops and PDAs. The drawback is inconvenience – I could not make or receive voice calls as long as I was surfing, because these devices require my Sim chip to work – and they are expensive.

I discussed my doubts with several Orange technical reps, and most assured me that with my Nokia 6100 I could do exactly what I want. The 6100, they said, comes equipped with a special port that allows it to be used as a modem. You connect the 6100 to your PDA or laptop, dial up the Internet, and surf away. Couldn’t be easier!

(Not all cellphones come equipped with this port, and not all cellphone service providers support the solution I found. But most will offer similar solutions. You’ll have to check with your service provider, and perhaps even change providers.)

Hmm. Well, I was a bit skeptical; those cellphone folks are always trying to sell you something. And considering the dithering I experienced over problems in the past, I decided to check out the information they gave me at Nokia’s Web site. As it turned out, the Orange rep was right.

In order to connect your Nokia phone to a PC or a PDA, you need to download drivers and programs from Nokia. The main piece of software involved is called PC Suite , which is an all-in-one program that lets you download icons, wallpapers, ringtones and other goodies directly to your phone. You can also synchronize your phone’s contact information and/or calendar with Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express or Lotus Notes.

Your cellphone manufacturer will have a similar web site, from which you can navigate to the download site. Of course the driver and additional software will have a different name and include more or fewer goodies.

You can find your manufacturer’s web site the same way I found mine. I typed ‘Nokia web site’ into my Google toolbar (MSN’s or Yahoo’s toolbar will serve just as well.) A half second later the link popped up on the search results. I clicked and navigated from there.

I needed a data cable (in most cases, a DKU-5 or CA-42 cable – these terms are well known in cellphone accessory stores and on Web sites that sell phones and accessories) which costs about $25 (prices varied between $15 and $50 in my mini-survey, so buyer beware). Prices should be lower in the United States – I’m in Israel.

If you don’t have a Nokia cellphone – and they are the largest producer in the world of cellphones – you may need a different cable. The web site of your manufacturer will tell you the name. You don’t even need the name. Just go to your cellphone store, tell them what you’re doing – take a printout of this article – and they’ll know the cable you need.

The phone also needs to have a data port – called the Pop-port on Nokia phones – to connect the cable to (all Nokia models I’ve seen have this port). I’d be surprised if any other reasonably new model didn’t have an identical port, but you have to check.

On the PC Suite download page, there is a link to a software compatibility chart – a convenient list that tells you everything your phone can and cannot do. For my phone, there’s Contacts Editor, Sound Converter (to create polyphonic ring tones out of .wav files, among other things), and calendar/contact PC Sync, and Nokia Modem Options, which is what is needed to surf the Web.

In the case of the 6100, you don’t even need a cable; you can use PC Suite to connect to your PDA via an infrared connection, and run the modem driver to pick up Internet connections off your phone.

Other phones let you connect with Bluetooth for cable-less surfing. Any phone with HSCSD (High Speed Circuit Switched Data) is almost definitely a modem-compatible phone, so you should check the specs before committing to a particular model.

I’m explaining this for Nokia phones. For other manufacturers the same information will be available. The links will all be there in the right places, and all you have to do is navigate.

Once you’re all connected, you can begin to surf the Net with your laptop. Or rather, you can surf certain sites – specifically, sites that use the wap protocol – like the ones you can use with your cellphone. Right out of the box, your Internet-enabled phone will let you surf to any wap ://site you like, and your PDA, which is using your cellphone’s connection, can reach those sites as well.

However, many phones can also surf “regular” http:// sites – for a price. The Nokia 6100 can, while the 3100 can’t. A quick perusal of Nokia information revealed that nearly all phones in series 5000 or above (including the 6100) are tcp/ip capable, meaning they can be configured to surf the “regular” Internet – which is what you want if you plan to use your phone as a modem. The settings you get from the phone company, of course, but you will need to subscribe to a different “package” in order to load http:// protocol pages via your cellphone.

With my cellphone service provider the on-board wap:// portal service costs about $3.50 per month, while packages to surf via tcp/ip start at $6. In United States the prices are almost certain to be lower, perhaps free.

Dennis Turner