My Mom’s in town and wanted to be able to get online with her Macbook and her Sprint LG Rumor phone. I have experience setting up a Macbook Pro with a world phone Blackberry and it worked great, until I got an iPhone which can’t tether. So I did a little Googling and figured I would put all the steps here in once place.
1. First, make sure you have a data plan. Sprint charges $30 for unlimited data and then $15 for the ability to tether.
2. Connect your Macbook to your LG Rumor via bluetooth. To do this, hit “ok” on your phone, select the settings/tools option and then tools. Go down to bluetooth and go to settings. Make sure you have it set to “on” plus set visibility to visible for either 3 minutes or always, I suggest setting it to always for now at least.
3. Now go to your Mac’s Apple menu and select system preferences and click network. Hit the plus sign at the bottom of the connections window and select bluetooth and then give the new connection a name. From the drop down choose new configuration and name it.
4. For Sprint, put #777 in for the phone number. For the username and password use your Sprint Vision username and password (should be the same one used to log in to the Sprint web site).
5. Now hit the option to set up the bluetooth connection. When this pulls up, if your phone doesn’t show in the left bar already then hit the plus sign at the bottom. Walk through the connection wizard to add your phone. Once it sees your phone you will need to add the code provided to your phone to complete the connection. (You will need to make sure the “on” checkbox is checked.)
6. At this point it should all be configured properly. It may take a bit for Sprint to enable the Vision data service. Mine enabled immediately.
7. You should now see the phone icon in the top nav bar. Click that icon and select the “Connect - your connection name here” and you should see your phone light up. It should only take a few seconds to connect. You will know you are connected once a timer shows up next to the phone on your Mac’s nav bar.
That’s basically it. Enjoy.
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Hello, are these instructions compatible with the Sprint Evrything Data plan? I tried this and I get prompted for a user name and password that I don’t know or have… Also Iu have a Rumor 2..
These should work with the everything plan. Give Sprint a call and they will be able to get that for you. Good luck.
Attempted to use the Sprint PCS modem option on my macBook to tether to my LG Rumor. It connected to the phone and attempted to begin a dialup session. It failed with a message indicating I did not submit the correct authentication information. I subsequently called Sprint as recommended in this blog at which point they informed me that Sprint is not permitting data tethering on the Everything Data plan (I know, it doesn’t make any sense to me either), essentially because they have no way yet to monetize the data plan for tethering. They didn’t say this in so many words, but the level 2 tech indicated as much adding that they are looking into plan upgrades for the Everything Data plan that allows tethering (i.e. for an additional $20 a month). I’m still trying to find a way around this as it makes absolutely no sense to pay more for data when I have an “Everything Data” plan. Sprint did offer a $25 credit to my account for the inconvenience, though, when I called.
Just called Sprint on this as I have the Everything Data Plan with 450 mins…
None of the “Everything” plans allow tethering although there are “rumors” that the Simply Everything plan will soon add tethering as an additional option.
To activate tethering, I would need to switch to the normal 450 minute package, add the $30.00 unlimited data package which includes unlimited text, add the $15.00 tethering option.
Now this sounds like it would only cost $15.00 more per month but there is a BIG gotcha…you lose the “Any Mobile Anytime” option and that option is only included in the “Everything” plans.
So, if you call a lot of mobile phones I don’t see it being worth it to switch from the “Everything” plan that I have.
Vince
Continue to keep up the fine work!