Tether Nokia 6120 classic to OS X for data

Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 07:41pm

When I am on-call for work I am required to remain within 30 minutes of a suitable internet connection. I am on-call this weekend, but I was planning to go for a ride along the Federation Trail.

That would be a problem, until a mobile broadband card was suggested and I remembered that we had data enabled on the on-call phone. So I could just take my PowerBook along with me.

The steps to get online through a Nokia 6120 classic on my 12″ Apple PowerBook (running OS X 10.5.6):

  1. Connect phone via an A to mini-B USB cable
  2. Phone should be in ‘PC Suite’ mode
  3. Open System Preferences > Network
  4. Two Nokia 6120 classic interfaces were detected. (each time I connected it is detected two more…)
  5. Select the first of the new interfaces
  6. Click Advanced
  7. Set vendor to Nokia, then the only model available was GPRS (GSM/3G)
  8. I entered Telstra.wap as the APN after looking at the existing phone settings, and left CID as 1.
  9. OK, Apply, and Connect
  10. Browse the intertubes

One caveat for these instructions is that data was already setup correctly on the phone, I did not have to do that.

It should also be possible to set this up over Bluetooth instead of USB, but I know this works and it’s not as if I will need it very often. I just need to remember three things: the phone, my powerbook and the USB cable.

The connection was surprisingly responsive and I have to say that the Telstra Next G network does appear to be quite nice (they sponsored StixCampNewstead last weekend with a connection), although I would never pay for it myself.

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2 Responses to “Tether Nokia 6120 classic to OS X for data”

  1. Good to see data was finally enabled on that phone ;)

    Ben - March 29th, 2009 at 9:27 am

  2. Thanks for the post. It worked for me.

    Jeremy - March 4th, 2013 at 8:14 am