Using a BlackBerry Bold as a modem (O2 + Windows)

If you’re away from home or the office and looking to use your laptop to access the internet without a Wi-Fi connection, rather than using your BlackBerry directly you could set it up as a modem using the O2 Mobile Web GPRS Access Point within a couple of minutes.

It’s recommended that you contact O2 with regards to any data charges if you’re worried about any possible costs before continuing with the setup described below. The steps taken assume that you are using the O2 network and using Windows Vista OS.

1. Ensure you have Desktop Manager installed (v4.2 is recommended) and running, then connect your handset via the USB cable.
2. Click Start > Control Panel > Device Manager. There will be two RIM devices shown under the ports section. Make a note of the ones in use (e.g. COM13, COM14).
3. Click Start > Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Set up a connection or network.
4. Select Connect to the Internet and click Next.
5. We would like to Connect using a dial-up modem or ISDN (Dial-up).
6. The modem we want to use is a Standard Modem.
7. Enter *99# as the Dial-up phone number (Phone number your ISP gave you).
8. Enter faster as the User name (Name your ISP gave you) and password as the password.
9. You may want to check remember the password and give the connection a name at this point, such as BlackBerry.
10. Go back to the Network and Sharing Center (See step 3), select Connect to a network and choose the connection you have just created (e.g. BlackBerry Dial-up connection).
11. If it doesn’t work at this point, head over to your Control Panel (Start > Control Panel) and select Phone and Modem Options. Select the Standard Modem with the relevant comport from earlier (COM13, COM14), then click Properties > Advanced. In the Extra initialization commands box enter: at+cgdcont=1,”ip”,”mobile.o2.co.uk”.
12. Finally, try re-connecting following the directions in Step 10. 🙂