Linux and Tethering a BlackBerry

My adventures in using a BlackBerry phone as a modem for my laptop;

The adventure began when my dial up provider decided to force a upgrade to their not so fast, very over priced broad band internet. I have been wanting high speed internet for years. I looked into satellite but download restrictions and throttling turned me away from that.

My town even tried their hand at being a ISP and had wireless broadband for a while. It was discontinued when APT offered their Broadband here, something smells fishy there!

This was what APT offered us when Broadband first came to town.

• 64K with 1GB of transfer per month for $29.95 a month
• 128K with 2GB of data transfer per month for $49.95 a month
• 256K with 3GB of data transfer per month for $69.95 a month
• 384K with 4GB of data transfer per month for $89.95 a month
• 512K with 5GB of data transfer per month for $109.95 a month
• 512K with 10GB of data transfer per month for $199.95 a month
• with a $10 per gig overage
  

Some towns are still paying those rates!
They have upgraded their plans, but the service is not very good at this time.

• 64K with 2GB of data transfer per month for $29.95 a month
• 256K with 10GB of data transfer per month for $49.95 a month
• 512K with 20GB of data transfer per month for $59.95 a month
• 1Mb with 30GB of data transfer per month for $79.95 a month
• 4Mb with 40GB of data transfer per month for $99.95 a month

The 1Mb service tier is currently available in select areas dependent upon local infrastructure.
The 4Mb service tier is currently available in Petersburg and Wrangell.

+ $5 a gig for overage charges

Talking with my neighbors it seems APT still have lots of bugs to work out, and the caps scared me as we use 10 gigs on dial up! So I decided to use a cell phone as a modem, it ends up costing us just under $100 a month with unlimited long distance & unlimited data plans!

It was slightly difficult to get the BlackBerry 8830 to work with Linux on my laptop.

Thibaut Colar makes a handy app that makes it fairly easy to tether your BB with a USB data cable (came with the BB) to your Linux laptop. If you need to tether a BB to a Linux box I suggest you give Berry4all - Easy Tethering for Blackberry on Linux a try!

Now I can have internet any where I have bars. lol

Edit: Windows and Mac are supported on BlackBerry, I would assume that it would be simple as popping in the CD that came with the BB 8830 world edition. Be warned not all BB's are advertised as being tetherable!