Bluetooth tethering for the Nokia 6555

I had an AT&T connection with the typical Media bundle promo which drained about $10 out of my pocket and offered very little in terms of download / upload limits.

My phone (Nokia 6555) is good as a clamshell model, and is capable of bluetooth DUN, FTP, HFP, OPP, SAP and SPP.

After a bit of digging around the Net and AT&T's customer support, I finally managed to get DUN working on my laptop. The dialing number to be used is "*99***1#". No username, no password.

While doing this, make sure that you configure your modem speed to be the maximum 921600. It repeatedly defaults to 115200, so you need to step it up every time you connect. There is probably a fix for this, but I haven't looked into it yet.

The speed seems to pick up after a minute of browsing - I don't know if this is something my overworked mind imagines or it is a valid symptom.

After testing this several times at different locations, I figured it was time to move to the AT&T Media Max bundle.

The main reason for doing all this was that I wanted my laptop to be connected in places where I do not have the luxury of free and reasonably secure WIFI.
The necessity for this came while sitting in a Days Inn in San Diego trying desperately to use its weak WIFI signal to book a hotel in Las Vegas.

The ultimate proof that it was worth the effort came at a client site where they did not have guest WIFI or ethernet and I had to send status reports back to my team.
Quickly tethered the 6555, fired up DUN, connected to the Internet, started the Cisco VPN, started Outlook and started work.
The speed was good enough for me to not realize that I was on BT, not WIFI or LAN.
Of course this may be because Outlook is always slow, but thats a rant for a later day.

The only problem I seem to be having so far with this method of connectivity is that the 6555 heats up unbearably when using it as a BT modem. Then it starts draining its battery at an exponential rate. The heating problem can be mostly ignored, but the battery problem is difficult.
The only workaround I have right now is to keep charging the 6555 so that the battery cannot drain. But this means I have to be close to a charging location. In the car, its possible to have a car charger that charges the phone, but what about other times? I hope to find something that will let me be really free of fixed location constraints.