Penned Thoughts

Apple is known for providing the complete solution. The iPhone ships with the SIM card inserted and, for the carriers that are officially supported by Apple in various countries around the world, the carrier settings preconfigured. In India, before the advent of 3G, you could purchase a factory unlocked iPhone from one of the countries where it was available (Australia, China (Hong Kong), New Zealand and United Kingdom), insert an Airtel or Vodafone SIM card in it and instantly start using EDGE to connect to the Internet.

However, since these companies introduced their respective 3G services in the country, Apple’s preconfigured carrier settings have become outdated and it has not bothered to update them yet. If you insert a BSNL SIM card on your iPhone today, you can manually configure it for 3G access, but with an Airtel or Vodafone SIM card inside it, the iPhone tries to spare you the complexities of manually configuring the carrier settings and therefore hides the relevant options.

How Do I Configure an iPhone for Non-Official Carriers?
How Do I Configure an iPhone for Airtel or Vodafone 3G?
This Is Too Complicated. Is There an Easier Way to Do This?
How Do I Find Out What Speeds I Am Getting?
What Speeds Did You Get?
Anything Else I Should Know?

How Do I Configure an iPhone for Non-Official Carriers?

To enable an iPhone to use the Internet services of non-official carriers such as Aircel, BSNL, DoCoMo, Idea, MTNL, Reliance, Uninor, Videocon and Virgin, go to ‘Settings » General » Network’ on your iPhone and enable “Mobile Data” if it is disabled. Make sure to also enable 3G on this screen if you are going to use it. Then tap on “Cellular Data Network” and enter the carrier settings such as APN, username and password on the following screen. To find out what these settings are, use Google.

How Do I Configure an iPhone for Airtel or Vodafone 3G?

The first step is to download Apple’s iPhone Configuration Utility for Mac OS X or Windows and install it on your computer. On the former, it will be installed in your ‘/Applications/Utilities’ folder. Connect your iPhone to your computer and let iTunes butt in and complete its syncing procedure. Once that is done, launch the iPhone Configuration Utility.

Click on “Configuration Profiles” in the sidebar and then on the New button in the left corner of the toolbar at the top. Give the profile a name, any name, and a unique identifier in the format specified there (I gave “com.aayusharya.vodafone3g” to mine). You can leave the rest of the fields as they are.

Now click on “Advanced” in the pane on the left (to the right of the sidebar) and then hit Configure. Enter the following settings:

For Airtel 3G:
Access Point Name (APN): airtelgprs.com
Access Point User Name: <Leave Blank>
Access Point Password: <Leave Blank>
Proxy Server: <Leave Blank>
Proxy Port: <Leave Blank>

For Vodafone 3G:
Access Point Name (APN): portalnmms
Access Point User Name: <Leave Blank>
Access Point Password: <Leave Blank>
Proxy Server: 10.10.1.100
Proxy Port: 9401

Once done, click on your iPhone in the sidebar and go to the “Configuration Profiles” tab. You’ll find the profile you just created listed there. Click on the Install button next to it. Your iPhone’s screen will now spring to life and take you to the profile installation screen.

Wait! This Is Too Complicated. Is There an Easier Way to Do This?

Yes, there is. Since the settings are the same for everyone, you can have someone else go through all the steps mentioned above and give you a readymade carrier settings profile to install on your iPhone.

Excellent! Can You Do it for Me Please? I’ll Buy You Dinner.

Wow, talk about spoon-feeding! OK, you lazy bum, you can just click on the following links on your iPhone to download the relevant carrier settings profile to it. Here’s the one for Airtel 3G and this one is for Vodafone 3G. Click on the Download button on the page that opens (on your iPhone, mind you) and, like at the end of the steps described above, you’ll be taken to the profile installation screen.

Got it. Now What?

Click on the Install button and then on the Install Now button on the confirmation dialog that pops up. Done!

And That’s it?

If you have managed to come this far without screwing anything up and if you had already enabled 3G services on your SIM card by doing the relevant recharge, you should now be able to launch Safari on your iPhone and start surfing the Internet at blazing fast speeds.

How Do I Find Out What Speeds I Am Getting?

By using a free application for your iPhone called Speedtest.net Mobile Speed Test.

How Much Did You Get?

I have no experience with Airtel 3G yet but I was getting download speeds of about 4 Mbps and upload speeds of about 3 Mbps on Vodafone 3G in the small city of Siliguri in West Bengal. The ping time was also fairly decent at around 300 ms. It’s a great feeling, browsing the Internet at speeds of around 4 Mbps on a freakin’ phone!

Anything Else I Should Know?

There is a Personal Hotspot feature on the iPhone 4 that you may not have known of. If you’d like to share your iPhone’s 3G connection with your computer or any of your other wi-fi enabled devices, you can enable it in the network preferences. Once it’s enabled, you can join that wi-fi network from any of your other devices and browse the Internet on both your iPhone and that device using the 3G connection on your iPhone. It supports up to five devices.

However, this feature does not work with Vodafone 3G on an iPhone 4 if you configure it according to the steps described above. I have not yet found a way to make it work. Feel free to chime in in the comments if you know the solution to this problem.

Thank You! You Are Awesome! How Can I Ever Repay You?

By using your newfound Internet powers for the cause of good. Go make us proud.

And I am ‘aryayush’ on Twitter. ;)

-Aayush