11 Aug
2022
11 Aug
'22
5:53 a.m.
Does anyone know if it's possible, or -- better -- have experience using
a cell phone as a dial up modem?
I'm wondering about doing something as an alternative to a traditional
POTS modem connected to a VoIP ATA. I'd think that treating the phone
as a traditional modem with venerable Hayes AT commands might be more
reliable than trying to do dial up connections across VoIP.
It's been *YEARS* since I've tried to connect a modem to a serial port
on a PC, universal or otherwise.
Does anyone have any experience with or thoughts about doing this?
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
11 Aug
11 Aug
8:07 a.m.
On 8/10/2022 10:53 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:
Does anyone know if it's possible, or -- better --
have experience
using a cell phone as a dial up modem?
I'm wondering about doing something as an alternative to a traditional
POTS modem connected to a VoIP ATA. I'd think that treating the phone
as a traditional modem with venerable Hayes AT commands might be more
reliable than trying to do dial up connections across VoIP.
It's been *YEARS* since I've tried to connect a modem to a serial port
on a PC, universal or otherwise.
Does anyone have any experience with or thoughts about doing this?
I have used such as US Robotics with a vonage voip account pad. Sends
and receives faxes quite well, as well.
The cell phone perhaps could provide a connection. A friend used the
cell via Wifi tethering to a PC. Then set up a route command to make it
primary and function as a router outside. Then connect to the network
via other devices, including the voip box.
We used this for a company I did IT chores for in a pinch when bell
couldn't make up its mind for our DSL, and pissed off T-Mobile. But a
couple of devices behind the tether didn't piss it off. Using 10 pcs
did though. (FWIW).
The vonage for voice worked, but not sure if it could do much more than
2400 or such (whereever you can function in modem protocol land w/o
phase coherency.)
We were in the center of Santa Ana with a very close in cell site, BTW.
Thanks
Jim
12 Aug
12 Aug
12:33 a.m.
On 8/11/22 2:07 AM, jim stephens via cctalk wrote:
I have used such as US Robotics with a vonage voip
account pad. Sends
and receives faxes quite well, as well.
ACK
The cell phone perhaps could provide a connection. A
friend used the
cell via Wifi tethering to a PC. Then set up a route command to make it
primary and function as a router outside. Then connect to the network
via other devices, including the voip box.
That's tangential to what I'm wanting to do.
The vonage for voice worked, but not sure if it could
do much more than
2400 or such (whereever you can function in modem protocol land w/o
phase coherency.)
ACK
I wonder what level / speed of fax you manged to get to work.
I've heard that under optimal situations, sometimes 14.4 can be
persuaded to work.
We were in the center of Santa Ana with a very close
in cell site, BTW.
I wouldn't expect the distance to the cell site to make much difference.
At least not as long as there were no drop outs in the cell signal /
connection.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
7:23 a.m.
On 8/11/2022 5:33 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:
was glad the pile worked at all.
Makes a big difference on T-mobile. if it works at all. Actually they
suck. but I'm not interested in dealing with the billing @ other
companies. T-mobile is creeping towards not being useful though.
I was interested in two problems here, one to run an office or network
on my cell. And the other to use the old modems to dial into dialup
services.
World in Boston still has dialup into their service, which is a remote
shell service.
On 8/11/22 2:07 AM, jim stephens via cctalk wrote:
not sure what you are after then. I haven't seen a way to hook up to it
in a "modem" fashion, so you can call dialups (like older serial BBS
modems) on any phone.
I have used such as US Robotics with a vonage
voip account pad. Sends
and receives faxes quite well, as well.
ACK
The cell phone
perhaps could provide a connection. A friend used the
cell via Wifi tethering to a PC. Then set up a route command to make
it primary and function as a router outside. Then connect to the
network via other devices, including the voip box.
That's tangential to what I'm wanting to do.
The vonage for voice worked, but not sure if it
could do much more
than 2400 or such (whereever you can function in modem protocol land
w/o phase coherency.)
ACK
I wonder what level / speed of fax you manged to get to work.
didn't check or care. The machine ran full blast and sent over a
reasonable copy(copies).
I've heard that under optimal situations,
sometimes 14.4 can be
persuaded to work.
I know USR should be able to tell, and I used the best version I've
seen, a 56k one. Would be interesting to query it.
We were in the
center of Santa Ana with a very close in cell site, BTW.
I wouldn't expect the distance to the cell site to make much
difference. At least not as long as there were no drop outs in the
cell signal / connection.
11 Aug
11 Aug
10:52 a.m.
On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 11:53:34PM -0600, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:
Does anyone know if it's possible, or -- better --
have experience using a
cell phone as a dial up modem?
I did it routinely in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I stopped once I got a
GPRS-capable handset, since that was much cheaper to run: 1MB of data cost
the same as a one minute call (which could shift 144kB at best, although
30-40kB was more typical) on Vodafone UK in the late 2000s. By coincidence,
this is still the case for me now on Lebara NL, but the prices are *much*
lower.
My phone used a relatively obscure corner of the GSM standard known as CSD
(Circuit Switched Data) which was essentially implemented as a flag set by
the handset to tell the base station that it should use a dialup modem codec
instead of the GSM voice codec for this call. CSD would only use a single
GSM timeslot and was limited to 9600 bps, but HSCSD (High Speed Circuit
Switched Data) could use multiple slots and telcos usually charged a lot
more for such calls.
So far, so good and It Just Works(TM), right? Unfortunately, there are
confounding factors:
* I suspect you're in the USA, which used NIH instead of GSM, and what it
supported and still supports is any guess.
* While GSM networks still exist, they've been pared down somewhat to make
space for 4G and coverage can be patchy or suffer from congestion. 4G has
*no* native support for phone calls: handsets either fall back to GSM
(like my "new" iPhone SE which I had to buy after KPN turned off its 3G
network) or 3G, or tunnel voice calls over VoIP.
* Wikipedia also notes that "After 2010 many telecommunication carriers
dropped support for CSD, and CSD has been superseded by GPRS and EDGE
(E-GPRS)." Except of course that GPRS and EDGE are packet-switched
services and no call is made, so it is not a direct substitute.
* Modern handsets may not give you sufficient access to the cellular modem's
serial port to send the appropriate AT commands to configure and make a
(HS)CSD call.
On the upside, 2G is mainly being kept around for the benefit of millions of
embedded devices which have 2G modems, so I suspect CSD is still supported
by extant 2G networks despite Wikipedia's claim to the contrary. I have not
tested this hypothesis.
So, just come to Europe and use an embedded GSM module instead of a whole
phone :)
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Grant Taylor -
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Peter Corlett