Internet in our Russian Village…

Cell phone icon
Modem…

I read an article from “American Russia Observations” called “My Rocky Russian Road to a Better Internet Connection”

Sveta and I have needed to be able to use our laptop whenever or where ever we can on the internet. We knew that we could get it done by buying a special modem that plugged in to the USB, but that seemed like a waste for our situation. I needed something that I could use in Ukraine, Russia, the Village and or any place I could get a Sim card and use in in my cell phone. Because that is the only way to get internet 500 to 1000 km from nowhere in Russia…

I read the above article and Robert MacDonald the author of the article gave me some food for thought. 🙂

While he was not happy with using a cell phone for a modem. It struck me that a cell phone as a modem might be the answer for me. If you remember a while back we bought two new cell phones for Sveta and I. They happened to be the Chinese Clone Phones… (The best cell phones we have ever had!)

So we decided to see if one of the phones worked with the laptop as a modem. After a little bit of finagling and getting straight in our heads the order of procedures . Sveta and I convinced “Windows 7″ to talk to our cheap Chinese Phone and Walla Walla Bing Bang – We had Internet. These phones being dual Sim card phones allow us to have the best of both worlds. I use a Beeline card for talking and a Megafon card for internet…

The key to this whole transaction (besides the lack of ability by me…) was finding the drivers for allowing “Windows 7” to accept the phone as a modem. This was not easy because the drivers for XP and Vista just did not do the job and I finally found a set of drivers for another Chinese Phone that promised they could work on many different Chinese Phones and it was compatible with “Windows 7″…

Well! It was almost a match but then I decided to rewrite some of the code in the driver and again Walla Walla Bing Bang it worked…

Now we had a speed issue that Robert had mentioned in his article. I solved that by restructuring the software in the cell phone. (Nice way to say I hacked the phone…) That solved the speed issue and now it runs at a nice dial up speed just like in the big ol city. Still not fast but acceptable for doing what we need to do…

Sveta and I can now buy a Sim card from any area or place and as long as that card supports GPRS we can be up and running in a matter of a few clicks.

Read Roberts article on his dealings with internet in a village. He has much more detail and gives many options that are available. He also gives a good explanation of the wonderful (good and bad) customer service that you receive in Russia…

Windows to Russia!

About the Author