Mobile Broadband Set-up on OSX 10.7

You know the part before the upgrade where they tell you to check all of your applications before you upgrade? Well, last night I decided that it would be a great idea to upgrade my Mac from Snow Leopard to Lion. Turns out that perhaps wasn’t so great an idea after all when my Huawei USB 3G modem dongle decided that it wasn’t going to work since it wasn’t relevant for the new 64-bit only kernel. Oops, I should have checked first. But it isn’t a complete disaster!

After frantically using Google to find a new driver to install and digging around the Huawei site trying to find a replacement driver I was getting to the point of doing some modifications to the com.apple.boot.plist file and restart my Mac with the i386 kernel instead of the x86-64 one that appears to now be the default.

But I found a Gem.... After searching the darkest, deepest parts of the internet, I found what I needed, and now, I will tell you how to Install Mobile Broadband on OSX 10.7 - Lion

As I am a T-Mobile Customer, I will be using a T-Mobile E170 dongle, but this should work on any Huawei modem. 

1) 1st, plug the dongle in to the Mac

2) Double Click 'T-Mobile Internet Manager'

3) Follow the on-screen instructions to install the manager

4) The T-Mobile Internet Manager will open & warn you the Device is disconnected. Ignore this & close the Manager.

5) Download THIS. It is the latest 64bit drivers from HUAWEI.

6) Install the huawei_universal_425_05.pkg

7) Restart the mac. When its back on, fire up the T-Mobile Manager & Hit connect :)

So if you’ve just upgraded to Lion and are trying to work out how to get your Huawei modem working properly with it, those instructions worked for me and I’m using it to write this post.