Dialog Broad band (new SIM) connection error in Ubuntu

Friday, June 26, 2009

Few weeks back I bought a dialog mobile broadband connection. (Student package whoppi!!) The connection it self was very good and if was within an area that has reception it gave what it promised. And sometimes more than that. Meaning it's download speed is 1Mbps and upload is 384kbps. But some times it went close to 1.5Mbps in windows. Truly amazing. (Yeah I watched it while downloading a 150 MB file and a speed between 1.2Mbps - 1.6Mbps was maintained all through out the download.)

Anyways now I wanted to try the mobile broadband on my linux distro which is of course Ubuntu 9.04.
I knew from experience that this worked in Ubuntu and in my machine for the HUAWEI E220 modem because I used it by plugging one of my friends' modem. And I also surfed internet from that particular modem using his dialog broadband connection.
But when I plugged in "my" modem, although the modem was detected without error the NetworkManager applet was not able to make a connection.

I tried to investigate what happened. I stopped the Networkmanager service

[email protected]:~$sudo service NetworkManager stop

Then I started the NetworkManager with the debug mode.

[email protected]:~$sudo NetworkManager --no-daemon

Then I noticed that it was all because it is not authenticated that I wasn't able to connect.

It took me sometime to figure out what was the reason.
Then I looked at the APN of the windows connection which was "dialogbb". But Ubuntu had it as "www.dialogsl.com"
So for the new SIMs the APN is changed.
What you should use as the APN is dialogbb instead of www.dialogsl.com
Maybe that amendment will be there in the new upcoming Ubuntu 9.10
Now the dialog broadband connection works like any other. :)