[X4U] Razr 2 Mobile Broadband USB?

[Joe Sporleder]

In my part of Kansas, our most reliable mobile provider is Alltel,  
and I have their mobile broadband service for $25 per month  
unlimited, where I use my Razr as a modem to access the Internet. I  
work for a small publishing company where I split my time as general  
manager of one of our publications and providing IT services for the  
company as a whole. I get 600K average download speeds and it has  
been handy to VPN into the home office while traveling and using  
Remote Desktop to work on the Mac OS X Server and also client  
machines. My original Motorola Razr worked great as a mobile  
broadband modem, and I could connect to my MacBook Pro (10.4.11) via  
bluetooth or USB. I had to tell Internet Connect that my "modem" is a  
Sprint PCS Vision. The advantage of USB is that I could charge the  
phone and access the Internet at the same time (using it as a  
bluetooth modem drained the battery quick without external power).

Unfortunately, my old Razr bit the dust, so I upgraded to the Razr 2.  
The Mac will not recognize the Razr 2 via USB. It will recognize it  
via bluetooth tho. Alltel's Mac support is non-existent, I had to  
hack together a solution from various websites with the help of  
Google. Anyone know of a way to get MacOS X 10.4.11 to recognize a  
Razr 2 via USB? The old Razr showed up as a port in the Network  
system preferences. However, no such luck with the Razr 2. I tried a  
couple of workarounds from links I've found on Apple.com discussion  
boards. However, I have been unable to get them to work with my  
configuration.

I would someday love an iPhone, unfortunately AT&T does not provide  
cell service in my area. Anyone with an iPhone, does AT&T offer a  
service for tethering the iPhone to your Mac as a broadband modem? My  
2 options would be to wait for AT&T to bring mobile service to my  
area (they recently bought out CellularOne in my area, so there is  
hope), or wait for AT&T and Apple's marriage to dissolve in about 5  
years so that Apple could make a CDMA/EVD0 version of the iPhone if  
they choose to.

Joe