Configure a Google G1 Android HTC Dream Smartphone in India on the IDEA network for unlimited GPRS data.

This post is mostly for my records and for anyone else on the internets who might want to configure a Google G1 Android HTC Dream Smartphone in India on the IDEA network for unlimited GPRS data.

After our first couple days in Delhi, we noticed a mobile phone store.  I had been using my google G1 android (HTC Dream) phone extensively in China (with wifi and GPS to track where we were when walking), but I never bought a SIM card.  We actually tried to buy one once in case of emergencies, but the communication barrier was too difficult to express our complicated constraints (needed to work in all of china).

In India we figured it'd be easier since they spoke English.  I told the guys at the store I also wanted to use the internet, so they recommended IDEA, which is available all over India and has an unlimited data plan for 20 rupees ($0.40) a day.  It sounded pretty sweet to me.  I knew what I needed to buy within 10 minutes.  Unfortunately, 2 hours later, we were still in the store as they tried to configure my phone.

About halfway through into their playing with my phone, we started paying more attention and realized that they were simply repeating what they'd tried before.  It became more obvious that they really had no idea what they were doing and could only configure phones they had experience with.  I figured it'd be easier to just take it home and figure it out myself.    The following settings seemed to work.  I had to select APNs from the wireless network settings and add a new APN.  Some of the setting below are different from what the guys in the store told me:

Name:

IDEA_GPRS

APN

internet

Proxy/Port/Username/Password/Server:

not set

MMSC:

mmsc

MMS proxy:

10.4.42.15

MMS Port:

8080

MCC

404 (default)

MNC

04 (default)

APN type:

not set

I also setup tethering to our mini laptop computer, so it can access the internet via the android phone while on the IDEA network.  To do this, I downloaded an extremely easy to use program called PDANet.  Currently this utility is not on the android market, as it's still in beta.  It worked fairly well for me, though.