Huawei E220 Modem on OS X 10.6

I’ve been trying to get my Huawei E220 3g modem working on snow leopard for sometime. The drivers that were in the device seems only to work with 10.4 and 10.5 versions of OS X. I even tried the client software found in huawei.com site but that didn’t help either. When I’ve lost all the hope of getting the modem working, I found out that huawei had another site where they host the device drivers, at huaweidevice.com, which I wasn’t aware of as it didn’t show up in the first page of google results for the query “huawei e220 driver“.

Following is the steps I followed:

1. download the Mobile Connect driver from http://www.huaweidevice.com/resource/mini/200910149695/testmobile1014/index.html (Note: I used the version 4.16.00.00)

2. Extract the downloaded zip and install the package.

I had to power down the computer the first time I installed it, but after the reboot the install went smooth; so if some exception occurs try it again and it will probably work.

3. Go to System Preferences -> Network

You will see two new network connections in the list to the left of the window: HUAWEIMobile-Modem and HUAWEIMobile-Pcui

4. Select HUAWEIMobile-Modem, click on Advanced button.

5. Set Vendor: Generic and Model: GPRS (GSM/3G)

6. Input your APN in the APN field. (for me it is airtellive)

7. Click OK and then Apply to apply changes.

8. Input the telephone number in the Telephone Number field. (*99# in my case)

9. Click on connect and the connection with the server should be established in a few seconds.

Good thing about this method is that it doesn’t require the mobile partner application to handle the connection. OS X handles the mobile internet connection instead.