Nokia CS-19 3G USB modem in Ubuntu

Nokia CS-19 is quite new 3G modem boasting 21 Mb/s download speed. Unfortunately it does not work out of the box with Ubuntu although it is mentioned in specifications that Linux is supported.

However this is easily corrected. All you have to do is some editing of usb_modeswitch configuration files, and CS-19 works like a charm.

First of all, make sure that you have usb_modeswitch installed. In recent Ubuntu releases it is part of base installation. If it isn’t installed, then just do


sudo apt-get install usb-modeswitch


After that go to directory /usr/share/usb_modeswitch. Currently, configuration files are compressed into one zipped file, and you have uncompress it in order to access individual files and add a new file.


cd /usr/share/usb_modeswitch
sudo tar -xvzf configPack.tar.gz
sudo rm configPack.tar.gz


Last line is important. You have to remove the compressed file, otherwise system will use it, instead of individual files. Now copy one of older Nokia CS-1x modems as a template for CS-19 and edit that new file.


sudo cp 0421:0610 0421:062c


Then edit this new file 0421:062c, so that it looks like this


################################################## ######
# Nokia CS-19

DefaultVendor= 0x0421
DefaultProduct=0x062c

TargetVendor= 0x0421
TargetProduct= 0x0612

CheckSuccess=20

MessageContent="5553424312345678000000000000061b000000020000000000 000000000000"


We are almost done. Next you have to edit the file /lib/udev/rules.d/40-usb_modeswitch.rules by adding there lines


# Nokia CS-19
ATTRS{idVendor}=="0421", ATTRS{idProduct}=="062c", RUN+="usb_modeswitch '%b/%k'"


Now everything is o.k. Just plug in CS-19 and it should work.

N.B. This procedure should work also for other Nokia CS-1x 3G modems that might be missing. You have to change USB ID:s, but procedure is similar. But current usb_modeswitch includes all previous models, so it should not be necessary.