The Substantially Similar Weblog

As a result of the Verizon v710 Bluetooth Class Action Lawsuit Settlement, I just got the LG VX9800, aka “LG the V.” It’s actually not as mediocre as I thought—more on that later. In keeping with my tradition of posting solutions to problems that are not easily found on google (an omnibus entry I plan to separate out into separate entries some day), I’m posting this tip about getting on to Verizon’s high speed (“3G”) network from Linux over a Bluetooth connection.

I was able to get on with no problem with my old phone — the v710. I was surprised when wvdial kept failing with the new phone. The key, it turns out, was adding the following to /etc/ppp/options:

 -chap -mschap -mschap-v2 

(I’m not even sure all of those are necessary, since -mschap and -mschap-v2 are not documented, but they can’t hurt.)

Here’s the whole process:

1. Establish a Bluetooth connection with the phone.
   • Make the phone “discoverable” — go into Bluetooth Options and set it to be visible to all devices
   • hcitool scan to find the phone’s Bluetooth ID (henceforth ##:##:##:##:##:##)
   • hcitool cc ##:##:##:##:##:##
   • hcitool auth ##:##:##:##:##:##
2. Add a stanza to /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf:
   

    rfcomm { bind yes; device ##:##:##:##:##:##; channel 8; } 

3. Add a stanza to /etc/wvdial.conf:
   

    [Dialer Defaults] Modem = /dev/rfcomm0 Carrier Check = No Baud = 115200 Init1 = ATZ Init2 = AT$QCMDR=3 Phone = #777 Username = [Your Verizon 10 Digit Phone Number]@vzw3g.com Password = vzw 

4. As dicussed above, add to /etc/ppp/options:
   

    -chap -mschap -mschap-v2 

You’ll of course have to deal with permissions issues (on /dev/rfcomm0), have the packages installed (bluetooth, wvdial, ppp), etc., but that sort of information is available elsewhere.

It should be obvious that this method costs you airtime. But in my experience Verizon imposes no other charges. I get about 16 kilobytes/second out here in Vermont, which isn’t bad compared to dial-up.

Finally, I haven’t nailed this down yet, but in some situations (maybe where you are outside EV-DO range), you may need to do the following:

• Open the phone
• Press OK – 0 – 000000
• Press 3, Network Select
• Press 1, Mode Preference
• Select 1X only.

(Remember to change it back to Digital Only Hybrid when done)

Finally, there is already an excellent page describing how to use the VX9800 (“LG the V”) on Linux. I would not want to displace its PageRank.