3 mobile broadband on Mac
I got some mobile broadband from 3 to cope with a two-week gap in my wired broadband provision. I had some pain getting it to work on my work Macbook Pro (which is a US one) running Mac OS X Tiger (10.4.x).
The software gave me an obscure error – "internal error 5370" or similar – when running the 3 Connection Manager software. According to a techie in the 3 store I went to, I needed to download the latest drivers from the 3 website. That was pretty hard to find. It turned out to be on the support page for the Huawei E160G on Mac OS X 10.4. (I don’t recall how I found that page.)
I uninstalled the old software, deleted the “3Connect” folder from applications, installed the new software and fired up the “MobileConnect” application. That detected the 3 network, but crashed when I tried to connect. This thread on the Huawei forum suggested that I could create a profile in the Network panel of the computer settings:
Firstly, run the ?Mobile Connect? Make sure under ?settings? there is a profile: I called mine ?3 USB Modem?, with Access Point name of 3internet and Telephone number of *99#. You only need to do this once.
Secondly, go into System Preferences. In the Network pane, select the HUAWEI mobile device in the left pane. Now, in the right pane, under Configuration, select ?Add Configuration?. I caled mine ?Three?. Add *99# as the telephone number, make sure ?Show modem status in menu bar? is ticked (for convenience) and you?re all set.
I had to enable a profile called "HuaweiMOBILE" first. Once I edited that as instructed above, I found that the MobileConnect application could connect.
Actually, it failed to connect the first time due to some authentication error. But it’s worked every time since. Perhaps the auth error was a signal strength issue.