I seem to recall back in the stone age that some old phones could connect via serial and act like a modem. Once you loaded a driver, did an AT, you'd get an OK -- and there was a way to get them to dial out. I wonder if something like that's still possible with one of the providers.

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Re: Cell phones returning modem responses?
By: Poindexter Fortran to All on Thu Mar 19 2015 08:42 am

I seem to recall back in the stone age that some old phones could connect via serial and act like a modem. Once you loaded a driver, did an AT, you'd get an OK -- and there was a way to get them to dial out. I wonder if something like that's still possible with one of the providers.

Years ago I had a Sprint phone (don't remember which model) that had modem functionality. Seems like it had to have been 2006/2007, since my son had just been born.

Since then, every phone I've owned has had that capability disabled, or it wasn't included at all. Most will support some of the Hayes command set, but will not dial out, instead returning ERROR or NO CARRIER or the like.

I once tried calling some support regarding this, to see if it was something I was doing wrong, or needed to enable something... but generally, they do not know what I'm talking about. It's hard to explain to a layperson the difference
between dialup networking and dialing out.

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On 03/19/2015 09:42 AM, "Poindexter Fortran" wrote:

I seem to recall back in the stone age that some old phones could connect via serial and act like a modem. Once you loaded a driver, did an AT, you'd get an
OK -- and there was a way to get them to dial out. I wonder if something like that's still possible with one of the providers.

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Last one that I saw similar to that was one that connected to the
computer via bluetooth. (This was well over 5 years ago.)

The only option I've seen in recent times is the 802.11b/g/n connection
that is bridged to your 3G/4G network.
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I seem to recall back in the stone age that some old phones could connect via serial and act like a modem. Once you loaded a driver, did an AT, you'd get an OK -- and there was a way to get them to dial out. I wonder if something like that's still possible with one of the providers.

That might depend on the software/hardware running on the device you are using. I remember hearing it was possible with my old Windows Mobile devices but it's hard to find good examples or mentions of it: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa921097.aspx

There is some documentation that makes me think its still possible, but it looks like this next article is mostly for tethering your Ubuntu machine to your phone's data plan, not using it as a dial out phone line, but you might be able to augment what is being shown here. The Verizon one still looks like I remember from doing it with Windows Mobile, the phone number you are dialing is #777, but maybe substituting the real phone number you are trying to reach would do the trick: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothDialup

Also, things might get a little funky with 4G connections. From what I understand (at least with Verizon - I've had them for years), 3G and below is on dedicated voice circuits (think T1/DS1 or T3/DS3 connections), while with the greater bandwidth of 4G they are able to do everything as Voice over IP, which may not play well with dialup depending on how they do compression. Though, from something else I read, even on 3G you are only looking at sustained 14.4kbs speeds anyway through dialup.

More links: http://superuser.com/questions/355241/how-can-i-use-my-cell-phone-t o-establish-a-dial-up-networking-connection
http://forums.cnet.com/7723-7584_102-327703/connect-to-the-internet-via-my-cel l-phone-using-dialup/

Finally (my last Google search before posting this reply), someone actually doing exactly this, with an older WinMo phone though, post is from 2007: http:/ /forums.cnet.com/7723-7585_102-267553/done-connected-my-cell-phone-to-internet- via-dialup-isp/

~KenDB3

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