I just got my Sonofon Mobile Broadband package and was eager to see if
it would work with my Linux machine.

The modem is marked as an Option Icon 225 HSDPA and is by default detected as an USB storage device (which holds the Windows drivers).

Getting the modem to work in Linux is done by these three components

  1. USB_Modeswitch
  2. HSO kernel module
  3. HSOConnect

Start by downloading the three pieces of software (versions below will vary)

Make sure you have the needed packages for compiling installed

# apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Unpack the USB_Modeswitch program, compile it and install it

# apt-get install libusb-dev
# tar jxvf usb_modeswitch-0.9.4beta2.tar.bz2
# cd usb_modeswitch-0.9.4beta2
# gcc -l usb -o usb_modeswitch usb_modeswitch.c
# cp usb_modeswitch /usr/local/bin/

and then create a file called /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf with this content

#######################################################
# Option Icon 225 HSDPA
#
# New Firmware. HSO driver support is available at Pharscape
# (www.pharscape.org)
#
# Contributor: Matti Viljanen
DefaultVendor=      0x0af0
DefaultProduct=     0x6971
TargetClass=        0xff
MessageEndpoint=0x05
MessageContent="55534243785634120100000080000601000000000000000000000000000000"

Now unpack the HSO driver, compile and install it

$ tar zxvf hso-1.2.tar.gz
$ cd hso
$ make
$ sudo make install

And finally install HSOConnect (hopefully you downloaded the deb’s)

# dpkg -i hsolink_1.0.46-1_i386.deb<br /> # dpkg -i hsoconnect_1.1.61_all.deb

Before I could use the modem I had to unlock the sim. While this maybe could have been done be sticking the sim in an ordinary phone, I loaded the modem in a VMware session and used the Windows software to unlock.

To enable the connection

$ sudo usb_modeswitch
$ sudo python -m hsoc

I’ve made a small script to do this for you

#!/bin/bash

gksudo /usr/local/bin/usb_modeswitch | grep -q "No default device found"
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
 then
         exit 0
  else
          python -mhsoc
fi

When asked enter your pin, then change the profile

Connection: Sonofon
APN: internet
Username: <empty>
Password: <empty>

That’s it. Click connect and within a few seconds your machine is online.