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Is It Possible To Create A Cell Phone Modem?

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Does anyone one out there in Xisto land know if it is possible to make a cell phone modem. I know the cell providers sell special laptop cell modems but I was wonder if you could convert a regular cell phone for the same purpose.I have electronics experience so I don't mind rigging my own circuits or anything like that.

Edited by microscopic^earthling (see edit history)

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You can use a mobile phone that supports being a modem and use it as a modem. You can use a bluetooth connection (but anyother connection will do) between the cellphone and the computer and you should be able to setup a dialup connection. You can probably best do this with bluetooth software like Bluesoleil, you have to turn on a modem-service or DUN-service (dial up networking). Then you should be able to setup the connection as any other normal dialup, like specifying telephone nr's and stuff.

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Sounds like you're a do-it-yourself type and that is great, as long as you have some directions, it could work. I would probably do a search and see if anyone has posted it online so you can avoid some problems.

Doing a quick search, I found this where a guy wrote out how he was going to use his cell phone as a modem. The idea sounds good, but the next one posting, said it didn't sound like it would be easy to accomplish.

Before you sit down at the table to begin a modification, search the internet and find someone who has done it and can help you.

Good luck.

Keep on posting.

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why dont you just buy a cell phone modem for a 100 and then hook it up to yuor cell then get wireless internet were ever you are so if you have a laptop use that with your mdem and you have the internet

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I have done some research and here is my follow-up.I am on Verizon and I want to keep my existing phone and number. I would not use this service very much, and I am CHEEP so the whole idea is to get by with little to no extra money. I called Verizon and in a nutshell this is what they told me.The phone that I have has an integrated internet capability. I will have to by an additional Office Quick Coneect kit for $9.97 (not bad at all considering). At no extra charge, and only time off my existing plan I can use Verizon quick connect. Quick connect only has speed around 14.4kbs, but hey its free. I can also upgrade my plan for an aditional $30 a month and get national access plan. This offers 40-60kbs. Some areas also offer broadband access.Everything considering I will go with the $9.97 adaptor and get free internet even if it is so slow my grandma could walk faster, and she dead. Why? cuz I'm cheep :D

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Let me make a second note. I gave this problem a little though and I realized that my original intent was to use my cell phone to contact my own ISP and not to use Verizon as an ISP at all. I would still like to hear comments if it is possible to use a cell phone as a modem using my own ISP.

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Well, techinally these "cell phone modems" aren't real modems as they don't convert digital signals into sound and then back into digital signals. A true cellphone modem would be possible though for any cellphone that has a place to plug in a handsfree kit. You could write a computer program that does the work of a modem and then output it as sound through the headphone port. The sound input could then come into the program through the microphone port. You would need to hack up a handsfree kit, but you COULD use a cell phone to connect to the phone network the same way as a normal modem.

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I used a serial/IRDA based one 5 years ago, it was a small dongle add on to a set of Ericsson phones, so you must be able to get them dirt cheap on ebay.At the physical level everything's analogue (audio & RF waves in this case)! Audio captured by the mic is digitised (A2D), compressed, encapsulated & streamed over the net. GSM is digital, and audio frames are sent over that network, however the underlying physical media is analogue RF waves but in digital-like pulses at very high frequencies, if you see what I mean ;-). It's kind of similar to digital chirps of a modem over analogue sound waves .. and eventually electrical pulses down a copper wire pair. The phones/basestations unpack that audio data ... but it could just as easily be data, in the case of WAP .. now GPRS/3G are data/packet-oriented nets, that can also carry voice traffic. 1st gen GSM/WAP wasn't designed as packet based, it's circuit based, so AFAIK you'd have to pay per second whilst connected .. not at all ideal for an el-cheapo person (myself included). One of the audio codecs used is CELP which uses linear predictions in the time domain by modelling the human vocal tract instead of the human hearing, so these codecs aren't great at coding anything else other that human speech .. worse than PSTN quality! It's ultra efficient, lossy, etc compression.Why would you want to convert digital data to sound & back again on digital cell nets like a modem, esp with GPRS/3G being common place now .. they're digital nets over radio .. of course this assumes they're cheap (they should be since packet nets are shared & far more efficient than dedicated circuit-switched voice nets, so the telcos should encourage its use given the limited available spectrum .. I'm glad push2talk is popular now, since perhaps this will force the telcos to encourage data use also ...)? PSTNs were setup for analogue voice first, years before doing it digitally was economical (ISDN was the 1st relatively common digital data/voice 'integrated' net AFAIK, over copper at the local loop still .. Fiber To The Curb etc means hopefully that'll eventually be nearly all fiber by 2020 maybe ;-)). Er, sorry for the tangent .. damn I do this far too often :-(.

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same problem as JIPMANIs It Possible To Create A Cell Phone Modem?

Hi there!

I feel like a total retard, because I got the same question like Jipman and trying to find a way to make a fax / modem-to-audio-in-and-out-hook-up. I'm totally frustrated over this because this can't be this difficult.

The only thing that should be done is make some kind of adaptor between POTS and AUDIO (and reverse). One hour ago, I saw the DualJack system witch make the telephone line "wireless" and the other small box picks it up and makes it "telephone line" again (and reverse). How come people keep saying it is not possible? Somebody please tell me why you cannot modulate / demodulate between POTS and audio, but you can make it wireless with a DualJack-set??

Why I want to do this? For various laptop / fax / internet connection reasons. It also will work in robotics (without wifi limitations and so on) and serveilance.

please help me out to let me live my dream! :D

-reply by Jeff

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Using audio ONLY!Is It Possible To Create A Cell Phone Modem?

Hi.  Late to this game but I think the point of it all here is to use an audio-only kind of modem hotwired to a cell phone speaker and mic so the phone company wouldn't know if it was data or voice.  There was an Atari 830 acoustic coupler modem out there that you simply put the old school handset into it and the earpiece chirped out the log-in sounds, and the carbon mic picked up the inbound sounds for maybe 9k data.  My cell plan is free from Friday night to Monday morning, so it seems if the phone company doesn't know I'm chirping data on my phone, it would be free internet for three days a week.  Slow but free.

-reply by Rich

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