Huawei drivers for Mac are troublesome. After working with the Huawei E272 for a few weeks and trying several configurations I’ve come up with one that seems to work ‘better’. Let me start by saying that the Mobile Internet experience is not seamless. You should expect network drop off, disconnects and other general frustrations with these modems and the network providers they connect to. When you have a solid HSDPA connection the speed is very good, faster than my Streamyx at home in fact at least on the downstream.
That said, in my opinion so for in this part of Malaysia, Celcom has the best network for anyone that plans to use their plan while in motion or outside of major urban areas. I’ve been able to get a full HSDPA signal on high speed boats halfway to Indonesia and on a bus with nothing but palm trees viewable on the way to Johor. If you will be using mobile braodband in Nilai or Melaka you’ll be happy with Celcom HSDPA coverage.
The modems come with a driver / script package from Huawei that in general, sucks. I’ve experience several lockups and kernel panics on Leopard with the Mobile Connect app. I’ve not ditched mobileconnect.app and just use the dial-up networking in OSX combined with Cheetah to monitor the signal quality.
- Uninstall the Mobile Connect application by dragging it to the trash.
- Plug in your modem then go to network preferences and click + to add the interface (Huawei Mobile) and service type (3g)
- Click on the Configuration drop down and create a new one, mine is called Celcom3g.
- Set the telephone number to *99# and leave the rest blank.
- Click Advanced and choose Generic for vendor and GSM/3G for Model, Set APN to celcom3g if you are using Celcom otherwise set the one specific to your provider. For Maxis it is maxisbb. Maxis also requires a username and password where Celcom does not. (maxis/123)
- Click PPP and uncheck “Send PPP echo packets” under Configuration in the Settings drop down menu.
From here you should be able to connect from the menu bar rather than launching mobile connect every time and having to enter your admin password. Grab CheetahWatch to monitor signal quality and usage stats.
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