Nokia: Keep WiFi, kill MEdia Net

May 7, 2009 6:25 AM

I upgraded my phone. It has WiFi. It also has AT&T's MEdia Net. I don't have a data plan. How can I make sure it's using WiFi?

Nokia E71x just landed. It's an S60 phone. I needed an upgrade, so I went for it. WiFi works fine, I can connect to my home network, but balked at setting up email, etc. as I don't want to get hammered by data rates.

In my connections settings, WiFi is set as priority 1 with MEdia Net as priority 2. What I'd like to do is remove MEdia Net as a connection possibility, so the phone won't use it at all.

So, here are my two questions:

1. Is it possible to completely disable MEdia Net as an access point, so I can use WiFi without fear of getting hit by access fees?

2. Is it possible to do so in a way that will allow me to re-enable it, if I do get a data plan in the future?

posted by caution live frogs to technology (7 answers total)

I don't have that particular phone, but buried deep in the menus are settings that the phone uses when connecting to the cellular data network. They are set by AT&T when you receive the phone, but there are plenty that will cause the cellular data to not work if you change them to the wrong thing. On the phones I've had, these settings are in fact user-changeable.
posted by kindall at 7:37 AM on May 7, 2009

kindall, I've found those settings (used the Configuration Wizard to get at them) but didn't want to change anything without knowing what I was doing.

MEdia Net is listed as an access point but I don't have authorization to disable it - the phone OS won't let me touch that.
posted by caution live frogs at 9:46 AM on May 7, 2009

Open up a webpage.
Click on Option -> Advanced.
Whatever access point you're using should have a little flag next to it when you highlight it.
posted by 7life at 10:05 AM on May 7, 2009

Huh...I need my coffee I guess. Didn't answer any of your questions. Sorry.

A regular user won't normally have permission to disable Media Net entirely. There are of course codes out there that could let you access that. I unfortunately don't have them.
posted by 7life at 10:11 AM on May 7, 2009

Call ATT and tell them to block data access. They often have to do for parents whose kids have no self-control.
posted by Xhris at 10:33 AM on May 7, 2009

Somewhere in the network config is a username and password, something like "CINGULAR1@WEP" or something. Change it to something else. It won't even be able to connect, because they check that it's correct when your phone tries to get on the data network.
posted by cmiller at 10:41 AM on May 7, 2009

Thanks for the suggestions. In the end I figured it was simply easier to get the data plan - my wife wanted to test out her phone's GPS features, so guess this question is now unnecessary.

I did figure out that pulling the SIM card disables everything except the WiFi - so that's an option for anyone else interested in the same idea.
posted by caution live frogs at 8:33 PM on June 7, 2009