cell phone dial-up

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psilocybin
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cell phone dial-up

Post by psilocybin » Wed Jun 19, 2013 4:59 pm

okay, so I was thinking about rigging something up to be able to do a low-throughput data link using the voice channel over a cell phone, so that I can do tasks like reading email or SSH on a laptop through my cell phone without having to subscribe to an expensive data plan that I'll never use.

so, I know that in the bad-old-days when everyone used dial-up over the POTS, the voice channel was filtered to only the frequencies required for intelligibility (which I know is still true for modern cell phones), but beyond that it was an unaltered analog signal. I also know that modern cell phones use some signal processing, like vocoding, to further cut down on bandwidth requirements. okay, so now I finally come to my question: given that signal processing, if I hooked a dial-up modem to a cell phone, and then ran a dial-up router/server at home, would the signal get through well enough that the data on the other side would be useable?

I just figured I would ask as maybe someone here has some experience with this (using dial-up through a cell phone) before I dive down the rabbit hole. I tried a very quick search and it looks like the people talking about doing this are usually either talking about doing it through a normal data plan, or with very old phones, although my search was very cursory so I'll be looking harder if no one has any immediate great ideas. I'm not above rolling my own circuitry for this (I have a few 8051's kicking around that I'm not using, I think I even have a CPLD), but it would be awesome if anyone knows of a pre-made solution.

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Cool_Fire
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Re: cell phone dial-up

Post by Cool_Fire » Wed Jun 19, 2013 11:33 pm

I'm not sure how much the signal is distorted over a mobile line but I know I was able to use my motorola razr as a bluetooth dialup modem back a few years ago. Either way you should be able to get a dial-up connection going over a mobile line but it may not get very good speeds out of it.

Either I'm pretty amazed that this would in any way be cheaper than a data plan. I don't know what the situation is over there of course, but here I get a decent data plan for about €10/month. It all depends on what you get for your money both in terms of data and voice plans.

For me it's well worth it because I have a smartphone and I use up about 250MB/month just with email/messaging/calendar sync etc. If it was just for a laptop I'd only use the mobile connection on once in a great while I would probaly still look for a 3g usb modem and get some prepaid card that gives me a reasonable data rate.
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psilocybin
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Re: cell phone dial-up

Post by psilocybin » Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:44 am

yeah I was mostly just kicking this idea around as a sort of thought experiment, it probably wouldn't be worth it all told (because if it were there would probably be some consumer product somewhere for this). and thanks for the suggestion, that was helpful.

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Cool_Fire
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Re: cell phone dial-up

Post by Cool_Fire » Thu Jun 20, 2013 4:48 am

You'd definitely score points for the cool retro hackery stuff with it if nothing else.
Get some acoustic couplers going too :p
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menny007
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Re: cell phone dial-up

Post by menny007 » Sat Jan 11, 2014 12:37 am

Cool_Fire wrote:You'd definitely score points for the cool retro hackery stuff with it if nothing else.
Get some acoustic couplers going too :p
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black7floyd
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Re: cell phone dial-up

Post by black7floyd » Thu Sep 25, 2014 3:59 am

Using dial up was a hectic issue at that time. THe dial up connection used to get disconnected often and you have to restore it manually to get the connection back. Now all that struggles are over and I feel so better.
Last edited by Cool_Fire on Thu Sep 25, 2014 4:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Napier
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Re: cell phone dial-up

Post by Napier » Sat Sep 27, 2014 7:17 am

I'm trying to use a mobile dial up but it's soooo slow. Any ideas on how to speed up the connection?
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Cool_Fire
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Re: cell phone dial-up

Post by Cool_Fire » Sat Sep 27, 2014 11:34 am

At the risk of stating the obvious: Yes, dial-up is slow. Even with a dedicated modem on a land line I don't think it ever got any faster than about 50-60 kbps. And that's bits per second so about 7 Kbyte/s. If you're using dial-up that's the luck you're looking at.
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Einstine
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Re: cell phone dial-up

Post by Einstine » Sun Mar 22, 2015 12:42 am

What if you...
Plugged in an Ethernet cable from your home router to your home phone jack.
Jimmy rigged a wire from a 1/4" headphone port to an Ethernet port
Plugged the headphone side into your cell
Plugged the Ethernet port into a router
And dialed your cell to your home phone

You would have a fully functional wifi hotspot wherever you are, and with most cell phone plans having unlimited talk/text, it would be practally free.

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Cool_Fire
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Re: cell phone dial-up

Post by Cool_Fire » Mon Mar 23, 2015 3:27 pm

Einstine wrote:What if you...
Plugged in an Ethernet cable from your home router to your home phone jack.
Jimmy rigged a wire from a 1/4" headphone port to an Ethernet port
Plugged the headphone side into your cell
Plugged the Ethernet port into a router
And dialed your cell to your home phone

You would have a fully functional wifi hotspot wherever you are, and with most cell phone plans having unlimited talk/text, it would be practally free.
Yes. You should totally try that and let us know how that works out for you.
If we're breaking the rules, then how come you can't catch us? You can't find us? I know why. Cause, it's ... MAGIC!
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black7floyd
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Re: cell phone dial-up

Post by black7floyd » Wed Apr 29, 2015 3:56 am

Now you are actually trying to be tony stark to be exact. Maybe that will work I guess. Anyway I will run some test cases before I can be sure that whatever I blabber is correct. So you will have to bear with me for some time.




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