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Just got my day-pass option with t-mobile under Linux and my HUAWEI USB-Stick HDSPA-Modem (lists as Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. E220 HSDPA Modem / E230/E270 HSDPA/HSUPA Modem in lsusb) running. Now I pay $2 per day, if I need Internet on that day (only 2G speed – I measured, I got something around 9-16Kbytes per second – enough to even use Skype). For $3 a day you get even 200MB on 4G speed. Nice is that the connection is apart from the speed not capped. Pretty good prepaid optionin the US. I got a second SIM-card for this purpose (didn't want to lose my gold status on my "normal" prepaid card).

Basically all you need is the wvdial-package and the following in /etc/wvdial.conf:

[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","epc.tmobile.com"
Modem Type = USB Modem
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Baud = 460800
Phone = *99#
Password = pass
Username = user
ISDN = 0
New PPPD = yes
Stupid Mode = yes

Make sure, that your modem is on /dev/ttyUSB0 (you might end up on a differnt USBn, if you have a built in modem). Took me a while to figure out how to specify the access point (epc.tmobile.com) and had to read this one out on my Android phone.

Just start wvdial now and it should connect.

You might also want to make sure that your user is in the dialout group or you will have to start wvdial as root.

You might also try as root before starting wvdial (not sure, if the storage module here interferes):

rmmod usb-storage
rmmod option
rmmod usbserial qcserial usb_wwan
modprobe usbserial vendor=0x12d1 product=0x1003

However, I think this is not necessary, if you select the right USB-port (I have a qualcomm modem built in).

Just wanted to share an interesting observation. I had quite some trouble with some programs in Linux playing sound (most programs like vnc working nicely), mainly with kvm but also musescore – it was allways stuttering. For fun I just installed the 3.0.0-2-rt-amd64 kernel and hey, the stuttering is gone!

Will continue to monitor this. Not sure what I lost using the realtime kernel.

Due to Skype's ever lasting bad Linux support and various crashes, I started to look for an alternative. I do give Skype credit, they try to take a lot of effort from the user to get things running. I toyed a bit around with jingle from jabber, but with not much success, neither Pidgin nor Empathy get the communication over Jingle right. However, I was pretty often (sadly not always – but I have to admit there were some pretty tough firewalls, I tried it with) successful with Jitsi. Yes, I should have tried this earlier as I was google-mentor for sip-communicator, Jitsi's predecessor, several times. Ok, Jitsi, I am back as one of your loyal supporters.

Even with the problems with the firewalls, I mentioned before, I had a lot of success using just the SIP-protocol, not jabber/jingle ( I used a free account from iptel.org for testing). Great video and voice!

With SIP, I also could easily connect to linphone (lots of trouble with ekiga though).

So my advice for you Linux users (and others who are unhappy with Skype) is: ditch Skype (or only use it on demand), get a jabber (or googletalk – you have this already, if you use googel mail) or sip-account and start using Jitsi. If you have a very small machine (Jitsi can be sometimes a little heavy on your resources – however, if you have used Skype before – do you actually care?), I suggest using linphone with a SIP-account (harder to set-up though).

A nice plus of Jitsi is also the option to share your desktop and be remotley controlled (in contrast to Skype, where you can only show your desktop). Native OTR and ZRTP (encryption of your chats and calls — like in Skype, but with an open protocol) support is another plus. Also multi-platform ability, making your (Windows or Mac) family memebrs use Jitsi and still being connected to them is an another additional benefit.

Not much recently on my Blog – yep I know, it’s summer!

Here just discovered for you some ultimate toy built in LEGO. Now it would be great, if you could buy this prepackaged in a box.

Back to seclusion and book writing mode — that’s why you don’t see me online these days. We are performing well, have hit 167 pages yesterday. The content production becomes harder, but we are still confident to get something ready this time, which we can present to a potential publisher.

So, are you all looking forward to our amazing book on Story Driven Modeling?