Update - November 30, 2002

--TH

Getting on the Internet with a Handspring Treo and the T-Mobile Network

A couple of months ago, I bought a Handspring Treo and have been quite happy with it overall. It's compatible with all of the programs and data from my old Handspring Visor, and it doubles nicely as a cell phone. The only missing feature is Internet access, but because Handspring promised that a free GPRS upgrade would be coming soon, I decided to wait. So I waited...and waited...and waited. By now, GPRS service is available in virtually every country except the U.S., and I've lost patience. The breaking point came when I got lost while looking for a particular address. If I had only been able to reach Yahoo! Maps, I could have saved myself a half-hour of driving around aimlessly.

First, I went to the website of my cell phone access provider, T-Mobile (formerly known as VoiceStream). They offered lots of confusing and expensive options like "t-zones", "T-Mobile Internet", and "iStream", but from what I had read, I was certain all I needed was a simple dial-up ISP. After all, long distance is the same price as local calls on my cell phone plan, so I could choose from any ISP in the nation. Connecting to it would simply take away the voice minutes included in my basic plan. I tried using a free ISP, but I had difficulty logging on because I didn't know how to set up the right log-on script on my Treo.

Later on, I discovered some info on the web about using a T-Mobile ISDN line as an ISP, accessible for free to all T-Mobile customers. This was great news because I wouldn't need an ISP subscription or even a log-on script. Unfortunately, the information on the site was a little out of date and wasn't intended for the Treo in the first place. Eventually, after collating information from various other web sites and a newsgroup thread, I finally managed to log-on to the Internet through the ISDN line and view web sites in the Treo's Blazer web browser.

If you have a Handspring Treo and a cell phone plan with T-Mobile, just follow these steps to get on the Internet:

1. Run the Prefs application and choose Connection from the list. Choose "New" and apply the settings shown in this picture. The Connection Method got cut off, but it says "Wireless Modem to Modem". (I chose "T-Mobile" as the connection name, but you can call it anything you want.)
   
   
   
2. Choose "Details" and apply the settings shown in this picture.
   
   
   
3. Choose OK for both dialog boxes, then choose Network from the list. Create a new service by typing a unique name in the Service field. (I used "T-Mobile", as shown below.) The username and password aren't important, but they must be any non-empty string. I used "username" and "password" respectively. In the Connection list, choose the same connection that you created in the previous step. Finally, for the phone number, type "ISDN-19132440821". This number was current at the time of this writing.
   
   
   
4. Choose "Details" and apply the settings shown in the picture. Apparently, T-Mobile changes the Primary DNS setting on occasion, but it was current at the time of this writing. (You can ignore the Script button.)
   
   
   
5. Choose OK then tap Connect. If all goes well, you should see the messages "Dialing", "Signing on", and "Established".

--Trevor Harmon