Huawei K4505 with Ubuntu 10.04

I just acquired a new Vodafone Mobile Broadband modem to replace an aging ExpressCard version I had that wasn’t working too well. It came in the form of a Vodafone-branded Huawei K4505 USB stick. It didn’t work completely out-of-the-box with Ubuntu 10.04, at first appearing unrecognisable. After some hunting, I discovered that these sticks initially present themselves as USB Mass Storage to allow you to install the Windows drivers. You have to give a few magic incantations on Linux to make them switch into modem mode:

sudo aptitude install usb-modeswitch
sudo usb_modeswitch -v 0x12d1 -p 0x1521 -M \
 55534243123456780000000000000011060000000000000000000000000000

Once the modeswitch command is executed, the USB stick will present itself as a modem and you can use the standard Ubuntu NetworkManager mechanisms to define your service provider and set up the connection. The stick should remember its state, and so you should only ever need the above utility (and command) once.

Comments

Steve, I'm afraid not. Good luck resolving the problem!
Hi Andrew, I used your tip and my K4505 worked fine for a while. Recently it has started to disconnect after a few seconds. It seems that something strange is going on with usb_modeswitch or udev, have you experienced anything similar ? Regards, Steve
Great tip - was up and running in matter of minutes with my USB dongle thanks to that :-)
Just to be completed, the following part"-v 0x12d1 -p 0x1521" is to be adapted from the result of the command lsusb. To be sure try to locate Huwei or ONDA brand to get the right numbers... Btw sometimes the command usb_modeswitch is not reboot persistent, you have to "eject" the usb device manually from the desktop icon....