It is possible – I’m writing this post via T-Mobile and my new webConnect Rocket.

Step 0: see if your webConnect Rocket is actually the same as mine.

mike@110psi:~$ lsusb
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 19d2:1201 ONDA Communication S.p.A.
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

If you don’t have the “19d2:1201 ONDA Communication S.p.A.” line, then likely you have a different version of the webConnect Rocket than I do and this guide may or may not apply.

Step 1: usb_modeswitch. This is necessary because the webConnect, like many usb dongles these days, actually has its windows (and mac?) drivers loaded directly on it. When the dongle is first inserted into a windows machine, it appears as a hard drive with its driver on it. Windows installs the driver, then magically changes the device into a modem. We need to use usb_modeswitch to do that magic change ourselves.

sudo apt-get install usb-modeswitch

As of this writing, you need to manually add the file /etc/usb_modeswitch.d/19d2:1201 with text:

# t-mobile ZTE MF691  Rocket 2

DefaultVendor=  0x19d2
DefaultProduct= 0x1201

TargetVendor=   0x19d2
TargetProduct=  0x1203

MessageContent="5553424392020000000000000000061B000000020000000000000000000000"

For more details, see this forum post and this one. Hopefully this file will be included directly in the usb-modeswitch-data package soon, but for the meantime it looks like the maintainer is currently traveling.

Now, we need to configure udev to run usb_modeswitch automatically when it sees the webConnect hard drive. Add the following lines to the file /lib/udev/rules.d/40-usb_modeswitch.rules:

# t-mobile ZTE MF691  Rocket 2
ATTRS{idVendor}=="19d2", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1201", RUN+="usb_modeswitch '%b/%k'"

(Before you add those lines check that they haven’t already been added by upstream since this writing. No need to have them in there twice.)

At this point I’d recommend a) restarting your machine and the b) inserting your webConnect Rocket. To test everything’s good so far, you should be able to use minicom to connect to both /dev/ttyACM0 and /dev/ttyACM1 and issue some basic AT commands.

Step 2: I haven’t been able to get network-manager to work correctly with the webConnect rocket. I get a lot of “modem-manager: Got failure code 100: Unknown error” in the logs. If you’ve got the time, the relevant source is here.

However, we can use wvdial and pppd to connect. If you haven’t already:

sudo apt-get install wvdial pppd

You can run ‘wvdailconf’ as root to generate a basic /etc/wvdial.conf. Then you want to edit it to look like mine:

[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Modem Type = USB Modem
ISDN = 0
New PPPD = yes
Phone = *99***1#
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
Username = user
Password = pass
Baud = 460800
Stupid Mode = 1

I suspect there may be other options that should be in here that would be helpful. But in any case, this is a working base case. If you find any additional helpful options, please let me know in the comments.

Step 3: Connect to T-Mobile! To connect, run

sudo wvdial

Wvdial will manage the connection process to T-Mobile, spawning an instance of pppd to maintain the connection. Once the connection is established, you can hit cntrl-c to kill the instance of wvdial while still leaving pppd alive and your connection to T-Mobile active.

To disconnect:

sudo pkill pppd

does the trick.

It’ll be nice once modem-manager (and hence network-manager) has functioning support for this device. I’ll update this post once it does. In the meantime… good luck!