# Iphone as Dialup Modem + ISP...same as EDGE?



## AlmacEng (Mar 24, 2008)

Ok here goes... 

When I was with Telus I was able to use my cell phone as a dialup modem. So basically it would connect to my laptop via a USB cable and windows XP detected it a cellular CDMA modem. Essentially I was able to use Dialup Networking to dial my dialup ISP (Sympatico in this case) and surf the internet on my laptop using my cellphone. After reading on the internet I was concerned about racking up a nasty phone bill because of cellular data usage, but after a phone call with Telus I found out it was actually free if you are calling an ISP (over the voice band). They would only charge you if you were sending data on Telus's 3G data network. Because I had free evenings and weekends I was able to use it whenever I wanted to during those times and I never had to pay an extra cent on my phone bill. The connection was pretty slow (a little worse than dialup) but that is to be expected. You could defiantly check my e-mail with it.

Anyway..my question is this: IS it possible to use the Iphone to dial a Dialup ISP (like Sympatico...over the voice channel) to get internet access on the iphone? I have heard of lots of CDMA cell phones being able to act as cellular voice-band modems, but not GSM phones. Seeing that the Iphone is a computer and cellphone all in one.... If it was possible and somebody developed dialup networking for the iphone, this would be like having EDGE, you could dial your ISP and connect to the internet to send/receive your e-mail etc. AND NOT HAVE TO PAY OUTRAGEOUS ROGERS DATA RATES. Has anyone heard of anything like this?? I don't even know if Rogers will let you dial an ISP for free...they might charge you for data usage. But if Telus won't charge you, I don't see why Rogers would....then again maybe it won't work because the Iphone is GSM and not CDMA....anyone have any thoughts on this????


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## Corvillus (Nov 15, 2007)

No, it is not currently possible to use the iPhone as a dialup modem. On some cellphones this is possible because they can be tethered to the computer as a dialup modem. The iPhone cannot do this, it cannot be tethered at all, the closest you could get to tethering on it would be having it connect to an ad-hoc connection on your computer and allow it to share it's EDGE connection.

However, there's no way to get around using EDGE on the iPhone for mobile data. Even if you could...that'd only help for devices it's tethered to, not the phone itself.


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