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Orange GPRS Internet Setup for Motorola V500

Monday 5 April, 2004, 11:22 AM

This entry describes how to configure a Windows XP laptop to use GPRS networking via Bluetooth on a Motorola V500 mobile phone where your mobile provider is Orange, and you're based in the UK. For those of you not familiar with it, GPRS is essentially an always-on internet connection through your mobile phone. It's packet-based rather than connection-based so you don't pay for the time you spend online. Most provider bills by the megabyte, and will bundle a certain number of 'inclusive' megabytes with your monthly package. It's widespread throughout Europe. I have no idea whether this exists in America, but if it does, these instructions will not be useful I'm afraid - these are wholly UK-specific.

(I'm putting this here for two reasons. First, when I just googled for this information just now I didn't find it - I'm hoping to fix that for anyone else who has the same problem, to save them from spending half an hour on a support call. Although with a bit of luck, Orange will add this to their support site fairly soon. Second, I wanted to put this somewhere I could find it for the next time I have to repave my laptop...)

First, make sure you've actually got GPRS. This isn't part of the entry level packages - you typically have to enable it. (It's not free.)

Most of the work can be done for you via the Bluetooth Setup Wizard. Make sure your phone is discoverable. (Phone Settings->Connections->Bluetooth Link->Setup->Find Me.) Then run the Bluetooth Setup Wizard from XP. (This can be found by right clicking on the Bluetooth icon on the right of the taskbar. Or just open My Bluetooth Places - the wizard is one of the tasks on the task pane on the left.) It should find your phone. When it lists the services, it should list dialup networking, amongst others. Make sure you select that service in the wizard.

This isn't quite enough to get everything working though. (Or at least it wasn't on my system.) Once you've got your GPRS dial-up in your My Bluetooth Places window, you'll need to right click on it and open Properties. In the properties window, you should see a 'Configure...' button. Click this to edit the properties of the connection. You need to make sure two things are configured correctly.

First, the phone number on the connection properties must be *99# (Some other Bluetooth+GPRS phones require a different string. For example, my old T68 required *99***2# here.)

Second, the modem needs to be configured correctly. The connection will be using a modem called 'Bluetooth Modem' or something like that. You need to go and find this modem in the Windows Control Panel's 'Phone and Modem Options' applet. In this applet's 'Modems' tab, select the Bluetooth Modem and click Properties. In the 'Bluetooth Modem Properties' window that appears, select the Advanced tab. Make sure that the 'Extra initialization commands' section contains the following text:

at+cgdcont=1,"IP","orangeinternet"

With these settings in place you should find you can now just dial up. I've found that Bluetooth sometimes switches off unless you leave the My Bluetooth Places window open. And of course you'll need to make sure that Bluetooth is switched on on your phone... (That's configured in the same place you make the phone discoverable, as described earlier.)

Don't you just love the simplicity? Step 83? There is no step 83!

To be fair, I think the only reasons I had to configure it by hand were that I had some old config left over from my previous phone, and for some reason the setup disk that was supposed to be in the box with my phone was missing...

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