Bell Turbo Stick- U950

Its always an interesting challenge to get new hardware to work with my Linux machine.  In this case, my company provided me with Bell's new U950 cell modem so I can access the Internet from anywhere.

So, I plug it and ... nothing.  So, lets see whats going on.  Go to terminal and type:

lsusb

The output is (emphasis mine):

Bus 002 Device 008: ID 1410:5010 Novatel Wireless
Bus 002 Device 007: ID 413c:8156 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 002 Device 006: ID 413c:8158 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 413c:8157 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0a5c:4500 Broadcom Corp.
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 187c:0512 
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 045e:071d Microsoft Corp.
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0c45:6412 Microdia
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0409:005a NEC Corp. HighSpeed Hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Ok, good, its there.  So, using the ID I dig a little deeper:

lsusb -v -d 1410:5010

most specifically:

lsusb -v -d 1410:5010 | grep "InterfaceClass"

and the output is (emphasis mine):

bInterfaceClass         8 Mass Storage

Oh, thats interesting.  Then I remembered that when I inserted this device into a Windows machine, it showed up initially as a thumbdrive which contained the drivers (nice feature).  Thats a problem... lets see what mount says:

/dev/sr1 on /media/MobileConnect type iso9660 (ro,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=devkit,uid=1000,gid=1000,iocharset=utf8,mode=0400,dmode=0500)

Well, look at that.  Lets eject this:

sudo eject /dev/sr1

(Note, sometimes you have to wait for the MobileConnect mount to show up, sometimes it doesn't seem to show up but if you execute the eject, it still works.  I haven't had this working for long enough to figure that fully out)

And my Ubuntu 9.10 immediately recognized the modem and set it up.  But wait, its not working...  There is another couple of steps.

Firstly, go to System | Preferences | Network Connection.  Click on Mobile Broadband.  You should see an entry there, if you don't go ahead and click add.

When you are prompted for an APN, enter:  inet.bell.ca

Then, under IPv4 Settings, add a couple of DNS servers.  I personally use 8.8.8.8 (Google's) and 4.2.2.1.

And now it should be working- it certainly worked for me.  The last thing I did was create a script which ejected sr1 and created an icon on my panel.  Once the light on the modem starts blinking blue/green, I hit that icon and Ubuntu will connect automatically.

Hopefully someone finds this useful.

Tim