This article is also valid for installation and troubleshooting for CCU-680 card provided by CAT telecom in Thailand.

For a while i have been a customer of “Nordisk Mobiltelefon/ICE” through their 3G service utilizing the CDMA2000 EVDO rev 0 technology in Norway.

Since i had been in Thailand for a while i had not used it much, when i arrived home they had a booth selling their new rev A service, so i naturally upgraded.

They provided me a CDMA2000 EVDO rev. A card for 450MHz band, they had branded it D-50, but if you look for this card on the pages of C-motech you will find it is branded CNU-680.

It is a card provided by a company very well known to me, by the name of C-motech.

C-motech is also provider of the CCU-650 and CCU-680 cards  which provides great flexibility aswell as mobility for mobile workers which needs to access the internet in Thailand.

I have tried the CNU-680 on my installation of MacosX 10.5 Leopard, i had a couple off issues with this in the beginning, but now it appears to be smooth sailing.

The documentation provided is written for MacosX 10.4, the 10.4 based documentation which is provided on files on memory within the card itself states that you should use “WWAN support” choice as the driver, if you are using 10.5 you will be using the “Franklin” driver.

I stated before that i had some issues at first, i resolved that by first deleting all of my connections for the CNU-680 card, and then i downloaded and installed

Franklin connection manager
Then rebooted, and then i ran the SwitchDriver.sh script.

Then i created the connection using the “Franklin” driver.

This connection creation will be similar to the connection showed here.

For the Scandinavian ICE/Nordisk mobiletelefon connection you will need these extra details:

dial: #777

username: cdma

password: cdma

You might or might not run into these difficulties, i have not updated my MacosX installation for a while due to poor bandwidth, and the driver upgrade provided in “Franklin connection manager” installation package might already be upstream.

Before i did those things in that order i always needed to run that SwitchDriver.sh script everytime i needed to reconnect, and it would disconnect after a short time.

There seems to be at least one company offering this very same card (CNU-680.) in another country on the same frequency in Russia, they also have branded their card D-50.

The name of the Russian company providing this service is “Sky Link”

I also notice that this company ships their USB EVDO CDMA d-50/CNU-680 card with the same way of installing it through the SwitchDriver.sh script.

This card also has a slot for a sim card, but on my card the sim card is not present.

With the service of “Nordisk Mobiltelefon” you should be able to surf all over Scandinavia with your subscription in any of these countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark).

Also i might add that “Nordisk Mobiltelefon” providing this service also was kind enough to put a freeze on my subscription while i was away in Thailand, only a quick call away.

Norwegian website for “ICE/Nordisk Mobiltelefon” is ICE - Nordisk Mobiltelefon.

Their website is sadly not in English, so if you do not speak Norwegian i do suggest you give them a call, most Norwegians are good at English.

The card is available at a Monthly subscription fee of 399,- NOK (Norwegian kroner.)

The price of the card depending on wether you will accept a one year binding subscription is either 1495,- without a binding subscription/contract or 495,- with such a bond.

A binding subscription is when you get a lower price for some hardware, but agree to a certain minimum term of using their service in return for that lower price.

In this case that term is one year.

The CNU-650 comes with an USB Y-cable for extra USB power, in my case this one was not long enough, since i only have 2 USB connectors on my laptop and they are located on opposite side of the chassis, so i had to buy a one metre extension to be able to fit it to one of the sides, but it did appear to work just aswell without this Y-Cable.

But just in case i will run into any problems if i bring it with me on the bus or the train, and if in that case it will need any extra power to respond to a faint signal or would do alot some extra computation when changing between towers, then it should have enough juice for the job.

I also saw someplace that they might offer service in Iceland and Ireland.

I might look more into that at a later time.

Latency appears to be much improved with CDMA2000 EVDOrev A compared to the former Rev. 0.

Also perhaps more on that either in this post or a later post.