[Fsf-friends] Airtel Data Card on Ubuntu

[Sandip Bhattacharya]

Vimal Joseph wrote:

> The Huawei EC321 Datacard works perfectly with GNU/Linux. Both
> reliance and tata Indicom have this card. I'm not sure about Airtel.

Reliance has discontinued the Huawei PCMCIA card. It only has ZTE, which
does *not* work with Linux. I burnt my hands on this. Reliance however
still has a Huawei USB external modem, which might work.

But whatever you do, do *not* take ZTE under any circumstances as this
Chinese manufacturer doesn't care a hoot about Linux compatibility or
standards. The chip used inside ZTE cards have some issues that even
kernel developers haven't been able to work with yet. I remember a mail
thread between the professor who was associated with Reliance's Linux
clients in the early years, trying to work with the kernel guy who had
worked on the chips that ZTE uses. The discussion reached nowhere
because the ZTE version of the chip worked weirdly.

- Sandip