Mobile Broadband for your Ubuntu Laptop via Vodafone 3G Android Smartphone

This allows you to "tether" a laptop or pc running Ubuntu Linux 9.10 (Karmic Koala), allowing it to gain broadband access to the internet via your 3G capable Android smartphone on the Vodafone NZ network.

Vodafone 3G Device Configuration

Tested with my HTC Hero (Android 1.5, parallel imported via TradeMe) and Ubuntu Linux 9.10, aka "Karmic Koala" (64 bit version) on my Insite laptop.

Configure the phone - when complete, you should see a little "H" in the status bar at the top middle, indicating you're online, and two little arrows in the top left indicating you're sharing your connection:

1. Configure Mobile networking
   1. Settings->Wireless Controls->Mobile network settings->Access Point names
   2. Set "Name" = Vodafone (or whatever you want)
   3. Set "APN" = www.vodafone.net.nz (although this could also be "Internet" or see http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=40&topicid=9780 for networks and their properties).
   4. Nothing else needs to be set (although MCC is preset to 530 and MNC to 01 on my phone) 
   5. menu button -> Save
2. enable (checkbox) Settings->Wireless Controls->Mobile network
3. Plug phone into laptop via USB
4. enable (checkbox) Settings->Wireless Controls->Mobile network sharing - Ok the dialog that comes up saying HTC Sync will be disabled.

Ubuntu Linux Laptop Configuration

Configure the laptop - upon plugging the phone into the laptop, the Network Manager (NM) applet informed me that it had established a "Wired usb0" connection. This gives you an IP on the 192.168.100 network - gateway 192.168.100.254 (the phone presumably). This does not, however, seem to allow tethering. To achieve this, I did the following:

1. Set up Go to NM applet icon and right-click, select Edit Connections...
2. Select Mobile Broadband tab
3. Add new connection
4. click Forward
5. check that New Zealand is selected country (was auto-selected in my case), Forward
6. select provider (Vodafone)
7. select plan - choices: WAP, Restricted, Unrestricted (public), or other... I chose "Unrestricted (public)", Forward
8. review settings, Forward
9. Shows connection name, and a form with various fields, and PPP and IPv4 settings tabs. These can be ignored. Apply
10. Close NM

You should now be able to talk to the net. My laptop network settings following this configurations.

Network Interface:

usb0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 4a:b3:53:ae:57:65  
 inet addr:192.168.100.100  Bcast:192.168.100.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
 inet6 addr: fe80::48b3:53ff:feae:5765/64 Scope:Link
 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
 RX packets:1198 errors:2 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:2
 TX packets:1122 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

Routing:

Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.100.0   0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     1      0        0 usb0
0.0.0.0         192.168.100.254 0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 usb0

I was able to ping google.com, access SMTP on port 587, access SSH on 22, and Secure IMAP on 993.

Another reference that might be useful to some people.