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How to Use an Italian Cell Phone as a Modem for Internet Access

Larry Klein

Use your cell phone as a modem so your computer can connect to the internet. Your cell phone connects to your computer via BlueTooth or a cable.

One option is to take your US SmartPhone to Italy and use its data access plan. T-Mobile offers unlimited data access internationally for a reasonable monthly fee. You can access email and the internet directly from your phone, or use it as a modem for your computer to connect.

Another option is to take use your Italian cell phone and purchase a local SIM card that allows data access. Then configure your computer to use this cell phone as a modem so your computer can connect to the internet. Note: You can use a regular European cell phone with a local SIM card as a modems for your computer, but the speed is very slow.

Enabling Data Service with TIM

TIM offers two plans for data connections: Maxxi Web FACILE and Maxxi Web TIME.

The FACILE plan allows you to connect 24 hours a day 7 days a week for up to 30 days, but only gives you a total of 500mb of data during that time. Just for comparison, we used the internet a fair amount and only used 150mb of data in 11 days. So for most people, this should be more than enough data. If you run over this amount they start to charge at .6 euro-cent per kb which adds up fairly quickly.

The TIME plan allows you to only connect after 5:00pm and before 9:00am and all day on weekends and holidays, but gives you up to 9gb of data which is way more than most people need.

I recommend the FACILE plan as it's the easiest to use and 500mb of data should be enough for most people.

You can check your remaining data by sending an SMS to 4916 with the text "solde facile" and it will return with the data you have left to use.

The FACILE plan costs 20 Euro and the TIME plan costs 25 Euro. There are multiple ways to turn it on but one is to send an SMS to 4916 with the words "PRO FACILE". You need to have at least Euro 23 available on the phone when you do this as it will deduct Euro 20 when it turns on the service. You can turn it off after but I think you have to call the operators to do that.

The TIM website has more detail on how to set it up and use it.

Configure your SmartPhone to work with a TIM SIM

To use your cell phone for web access in Italy using TIM, you need to do the following steps

Buy a data cable to connect the phone to the USB port of the computer

Cables should be available from many sources including Ebay. I found this listing on Ebay for a cable for the Nokia 1110 for $0.99 plus $5.50 shipping. Just do a search on google or on Ebay for "data cable nokia 1110".

When you plug in the cable to the phone and then the computer, the computer should recognize the phone and set up a "USB Modem" automatically. It's possible that you may need a driver for the phone to make it work. I did not need one for my phones.

Set up a dial-up networking connection

There are many good pages on the web with directions for how to do this. Here is one I found on howardforums.com which is for T-mobile but is the same for TIM except for the APN name, which is "ibox.tim.it". This is for Windows XP.

Here are the steps from that tutorial:

  1. Set up a new connection.
    Go to the Control Panel > Network Settings > Network Connections > Create a New Connection. Click Next, Connect to the Internet, Set up my connection manually, Dial up modem, Select the previously installed Bluetooth modem, Give your connection a name, Phone number is *99#, Leave name and password blank
  • Enter Init String for your data plan
    Go to the Control Panel > Phone and Modems. Select Modems Tab, Highlight your USB modem, Select Properties, Select Advance, Enter at+cgdcont=1,"IP","ibox.tim.it".

Dial to make the connection

To do this, double click on the network connection icon created in the step above and then click "dial". It will connect and you are ready to go. The phone screen should say something about being connected using GPRS.

Resources

www.tim.it: TIM, Italian phone company

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