I purchased a BlackBerry Pearl from Cingular the other day to replace my (already) aging Nokia 6682.

I called Cingular to setup the BlackBerry data plan because I guess the Cingular MediaNET is different than the Cingular BlackBerry Media plan, because the BlackBerry plan has extra features which tie in with BlackBerry.com (such as IMAP mail checking, messaging and whatnot). This raised my monthly data bill from Cingular from $19.99/mo to $29.99/mo, which I didn’t mind.

I then asked the Cingular support person if I could use the BlackBerry Pearl as a Bluetooth modem as I did with my Nokia 6682 which allowed me to get online using my Powerbook. He told me I had to purchase a “Cell Phone Teathering Plan” for $79.99/mo(!!). I was -floored-. Surely it had to be possible, GPRS/EDGE is the same on both phones.

Bledded be the powers of Google and the internets, as I discovered this blog entry by Grant Goodale over at Fibble.org. He was able to hack together a Modem Script that OSX would be able to use with the Blackberry Pearl. I have attached the script to this post and it can be downloaded here. Place this file in /Library/Modem Scripts/

After that, you setup the dial up account with the following settings:

Phone Number: wap.cingular

User Name: WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM

Password: CINGULAR1

Bingo Bango, you should be online and ready to rock and roll without any fancy pants $79 plan!