I had tried USB Modems from Zain, Zantel and Vodacom, with little success only on Vodacom. But due to the price I was forced to continue using my phone as a modem, on Tigo. But GPRS was not fast enough. During X-Mas, I visited a friend of mine who was using a Sasatel USB Modem. The speed was 'tempting' fast, and the price better as compare to the other telcoms. So I drove to Sasatel headquarters to get myself connected. But I was a bit disappointed to be told that the modems only works on MS Windows. So I had to get a Wifi Router, luck them. But I was given hope that new modems with Linux support were coming soon.
I have sent lots of email to the address on the Contacts page, Sasatel is a few of the companies have actually responded. I commend them for that.
Yesterday, I checked with them and guess what, they are here. Sasatel USB Modems [EVDO CDMA] now supports the following Linux flavours: Redhat Enterprise Linux 3+, Fedora Core 5+(execpt 11 version), SUSE Desktop Linux 9+, Debian Linux 5+ and Ubuntu Linux 5+. Because it support Debian and Ubuntu, its safe to assume that it will work with all derivatives of Ubuntu such as Linux Mint.
Muffadal Essaji, Data Product Officer - Sasatel, was kind enough to send me the user manual and it share it with you.
I can not wait to get an reason to purchase one of those and try on the Linux flavors we make available for you.
I hope other telcoms will also look into making sure that Linux users are not left out.
