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This is written for people running Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Also, I am using AT&T wireless with the MediaNet Unlimited plan. And yes, you are not really supposed to use that plan when tethering your phone. But it seems that unless you overdo it, they don’t really care. There are several reports from people who downloaded gigabytes of data and then got massive bills from AT&T - but for the occasional quick check of email or a few minutes of browsing if there’s no WiFi available, this seems to work just fine. Needless to say, your mileage may vary, so this is at your own risk…

First, on your V3xx, go to Options (that’s the left soft key on the home screen) and select Use Bluetooth and then [Find Me]. That will make your phone discoverable. If you have another Bluetooth device setup (like a headset) you need to first drop that - the V3xx Bluetooth stack can only deal with one connection at a time.

Next, on your Mac, go to the Bluetooth menu in your menu-bar and click on Setup Bluetooth Devices…. This will open the Bluetooth Setup Assistant. You can also get there from System Preferences -> Bluetooth and then clicking the + symbol in the lower left corner.

Hit Continue and then choose Mobile Phone and once again hit Continue. The Mac is now searching for discoverable Bluetooth devices that it can find and should list your phone. BTW, the name which is displayed for your phone can be setup with the Setup item in the Use Bluetooth menu - I’d recommend something like your initials and something that identifies your device - I use D2 V3xx. Select your phone in the list of discovered devices and again click Continue. The Mac will gather some more information on the device, once it shows that it’s done, click Continue again.

Next the Mac needs to pair with your phone - it will show you a pin number that you need to enter into the phone - normally it’s 8 digits. The V3xx will show a dialogue that asks you whether you want to bond with the computer (it will use the Bluetooth name of your Mac). Click Yes and then enter the pin and click Ok. Now the phone should tell you that it bonded successfully with the computer.

Now the Mac will request a gateway connection on your phone. Click Grant on the phone and Continue on your Mac. Make sure that Access the Internet with your phone’s data connection is selected.

Next you’ll get to the Mobile Phone Set Up screen. The default settings for Phone Vendor and Phone Model should be correct (Motorola and GPRS (GSM/G3). Use WAP.CINGULARGPRS.COM as Username and CINGULAR1 as Password. The APN is WAP.CINGULAR, CID is 1. Make sure that both Show Bluetooth status in the menu bar and Show Modem status in the menu bar are selected. It should look something like this:

Click Continue and then Quit

You now should have a little phone connection icon in your Menubar. Select Connect Bluetooth in that menu. You should first see Connecting… and then Authenticating… which is finally replaced by a timer that counts your connection time.

That’s it, your done - enjoy browsing the net - and make sure that you really have an unlimited data plan or this could get really expensive. Once you are done, click on the connection time and select Disconnect Bluetooth.

On the AT&T 3G network I am getting very respectable data rates - often 50-80 kBytes per second. Edge connections seem to top out around 15-20 kBytes per second. Certainly enough to check email or a web page or two.

Thanks for visiting!
I hope this was helpful - if not, please leave a comment and let me know why! Were you searching for something else? Did I miss an important aspect?