BSNL EVDO (EV-DO) and Ubuntu Gutsy

BSNL launched EV-DO card last year here in India. It connects to the Internet providing close to broadband speeds. Their infrastructure has been improving gradually here and the news is that it would support speeds upto 2mbps by the end of this month.

The coverage is particularly good in Bengaluru. Even more impressive is the tariff for the device which amounts to just Rs 500 + taxes each month for unlimited usage (This is much better than the Airtel GPRS on mobile for Internet connectivity outside office). The security deposit is around Rs 1000/- and the rental of the device amounts to Rs 200 each month.

The best thing is that it also works under Linux! [:http://platonic.techfiz.info/|Shiv has a detailed and useful blog post] on how to configure it on Ubuntu Gutsy. I remember someone posting on the ubuntu-in list asking about this.

Ever since I purchased the BSNL EVDO I had tried on several occasions, but was unsuccessful in getting it working on Ubuntu. Looks like the right connection strings with Stupid Mode = 1 does the job. (All these details and work around is thanks to Shiv - who spent a lot of time reading up and hacking through the device on my request).

Since my device is working fine now and since Om's write-up is rather exhaustive on details, below's the summary of what got it working on my hp nx notebook:

1. The first step was to get the /proc/bus/usb working on Ubuntu.
(Several blog posts discussing the CDMA cards mention this, but do not tell you that it is missing on Ubuntu! It is a symlink to mounted usb filesystem/device).
All I had to do to get this running was to remove the comment on the below lines in /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh:

#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
domount usbfs "" /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb


2. The device when plugged in is listed by lsusb. Mine wasn't listed. The below code rectified this:
modprobe usbserial vendor=0x05c6 product=0x6000

3. The next thing was the configuration file with connection strings. The configuration posted by Shiv on his blog worked perfectly for me.

[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Modem Type = Analog Modem
ISDN = 0
Phone = #777
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Username =
Password =

Baud = 460800
Stupid Mode = 1


(username and password is the same in BSNL's case - the 8 digit number allocated to the device)

firing up wvdial then dials in and provides quite impressive speeds. [:http://platonic.techfiz.info/2008/03/04/hacking-bsnl-evdo-on-linux/|Thanks again to Shiv for the tip] and also thanks to the Ukranian blog post that served as the only guide until now to ZTE AC8700 800M Modem provided by BSNL. That Live Journal blog talks about exactly the same device offered there in Ukrain by Peoplenet.