I’ve got a Nokia 6600 phone. Nice phone. T-Mobile has a bare-bones internet plan which gets you out and on the ‘net. Its nice, but there’s a lot of ports being blocked and any app that requires an internet connection fails. T-Mobile has an internet plan, but its Crazy Expensive™ per month. I haven’t been able to find a work around either.

Then the other day it hit me: Persuade the phone to use a dialup connection. Here’s how to do it.

1. You’ll need a phone which can do this. A Nokia 6600 works. I would think other phones can do this too, but maybe not.

2. You’ll need a dialup internet plan. There’s some pretty cheap ones out there. I get mine from the university I go to.

3. Go to Settings -> Connections -> Access Points. We want to add a new access point.

4. Give it a name and specify the data bearer as “data call.” Then enter the dialup number and user name and password. For authentication, I left it as “normal.”

5. When you use your favorite app, tell it to use your new access point you setup.

There are some drawbacks to doing this like it uses your phone connection and ties up your line. But the advantage is you have full ‘net access and all the ports are open.

By using this technique, I was able to use Putty, AgileMessenger, and several J2ME apps which hadn’t worked with the simple t-zones plan.