I have just had a long play with an old dongle (ZTE MF627) on both a PC (Linux Mint) and OSMC on RPi. The procedures are similar except with OSMC you need to install package ppp and, I think, hal-info (which is not in the repo but is just a bunch of files which I copied across from the PC). I can get the dongle to connect with terminal commands and if I disconnect the WiFi, System info → Network reports the IP of the mobile broadband connection. It comes up in ifconfig as ppp0 but it doesn’t show up in MyOSMC as a wired connection and can’t be selected for tethering.
I know it’s on-line because I can ping 8.8.8.8 through it but I can’t ping www.google.com ie it doesn’t seem to know a DNS. So I haven’t got it streaming on-line content yet. On the PC it works fine. The steps are:
- Make sure dongle is recognised (ie has a driver) by looking at dmesg
- Install hal-info or at least make sure you’ve got
/usr/share/hal/fdi/information/10freedesktop/10-modem.fdi - Install usb-modeswitch
- Download http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/device_reference.txt and
copy the bit of that which refers to your dongle into
/etc/usb_modeswitch.conf, which should have been created when you
installed the package. - if you installed ofono, uninstall it and re-boot
- run sudo usb_modeswitch -c /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf and check lsusb to see if it’s done it’s stuff (product ID and description should change)
- Install ppp
- Download and unzip sakis3g
- Run sudo sakis3g --interactive “connect” and follow the prompts
I’m not saying that’s the only/best way to do it, but it works up to a point. Main references:
Sakis3g is better than using pon or wvdial as it gives you better feedback and is cleverer (eg it found that my modem was on /dev/ttyUSB2, not the other two ports)