Today i bought a huawei E180 from the Irish ISP Three. That modem is supposed to bring very good speeds (up to 7.2 Mbps download). Since I was less than enthusiastic to run it on Windows, I started to play around with it on Linux. I used Gentoo for the following set up but you can of course adapt that to any other Linux. First, make sure you grab usb_modeswitch (under Gentoo, just do emerge usb_modeswitch. Then edit /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf and uncomment the following:

DefaultVendor= 0x12d1
DefaultProduct= 0x1001
HuaweiMode=1

Then create the following file : /etc/udev/rules.d/45-huawei.rules containing only that line :

SUBSYSTEM==”usb”, SYSFS{idVendor}==”12d1″, SYSFS{idProduct}==”1003″, RUN+=”/usr/sbin/usb_modeswitch”.

You can restart udev with the following commands: killall udevd && /usr/sbin/udevd –daemon

Make sure your kernel has the following option set as Y (under Device Drivers/USB/Serial) :

CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_GENERIC=y

Also, make sure your /etc/modprobe.conf contains:

options usbserial vendor=0x12d1 product=0x1003

Then you should be able to connect your device, the following should appear:

usb 8-6: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 23
usb 8-6: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
usbserial_generic 8-6:1.0: generic converter detected
usb 8-6: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB0

Last but not least, you should now be able to use it with NetworkManager but failing that, you can use the good old /etc/wvdial.conf:

[Dialer Defaults]
Phone = *99#
Username = 3ireland
Password = 3ireland
Stupid Mode = 1
Dial Command = ATDT

[Dialer thr33]
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Baud = 460800
Init2 = ATZ
Init3 = ATE0 V1 &D2; &C1; S0=0 +IFC=2,2
ISDN = 0
Modem Type = Analog Modem
Init5 = AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”3ireland.ie”

Et voila, you can now use your almost quick semi broadband 3g dongle.