Prateek Dayal

I am leaving on a long trip soon and therefore decided to get some form of internet connectivity on the move. The most popular option seems to be a reliance or tata CDMA USB modem. The only downside is that you have to pay for a whole year if you want the card free. In any case its a lot of investment if all you want is connectivity for a month or less every year. I therefore looked at the solutions Airtel offers and all i could find out from the website was some basic info on the Mobile Office solution. On visiting the airtel office, I found out that they do have internet available for prepaid cards. They have two options to pick from

• Unlimited browsing for a day for Rs 20 (SMS ‘MO’ to 6123)
• Unlimited browsing for a week for Rs 99 (SMS ‘MO’ to 6122)

You can browse on your phone or connect it to your laptop and browse there. However the website offers no instructions on how to connect and you have to pay a visit to one of their bigger centers to get some help. I was after a lot of struggle finally able to get it working on my laptop. Here are the steps to follow on an imate windows mobile phone (I have SP5m but it should not be too different on other phones)

1. Go to Settings >> Connections >> GPRS >> Add New

2. Enter a name and enter Access Point as airtelgprs.com

3. You should at this point be able to browse the internet on the phone (download operamini for better experience though)

4. To connect using a laptop, Goto Accessories >> Modem Link

5. I use a cable to connect so select Connections as USB and enter access point name as ‘airtelgprs.com’ (though it does not really matter)

6. Click activate and connect it to your laptop

7. You can install the driver supplied with your imate phone or use the one mentioned here. Basically after this step, you should have a HTC USB modem listed in your hardware list.

8. At this point, if you call airtel service, they will ask you to create a new dialer and then enter *99***1# and all the stuff that never works.

9. Go back to step 7 and download the file mentioned in the link there. Here is a direct link. The zip file contains a dialer. Run it, select HTC USB modem and enter airtelgprs.com in the APN field. Dial in and get connected to the network!

Let me know if the instructions work for you. To resume browsing on phone again, deactive the modem (from Accessories >> Modem Link). If you are not able to connect, try browsing using internet explorer on the phone.

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airtel, gprs, htc, imate, laptop, mobile office, usb modem, windows xp