Martin Fleming

SOLVED: O2 Pay & Go Mobile Broadband on Ubuntu Karmic

I don’t know about other distro’s but the mobile broadband data in Ubuntu is inaccurate for O2 Pay and Go broadband.  In Jaunty I could just use the Network Manager to correct the APN to m-bb.o2.co.uk.  However, after upgrading to Karmic Beta, Network Manager seems to have a bug and does not save any edited connection data.  This bug may be fixed in the final release but for now there is an easy solution to this problem.

Fire up your text editor

$ sudo gedit /usr/share/mobile-broadband-provider-info/serviceproviders.xml

On line 1877 (or around if this file has been updated since I wrote this post) change the APN to m-bb.o2.co.uk from payandgo.o2.co.uk

<apn value="m-bb.o2.co.uk">
 <name>Prepaid</name>
 <username>payandgo</username>
 <password>payandgo</password>
</apn>

If you currently have a connection set in your Network Manager you will need to delete it and add a new mobile broadband connection.  Selecting O2 prepaid will now set you up with a working connection.

If you have no credit, don’t forget the only website you can visit will be O2′s Top Up Website.