I recently purchased SnapDialer software from FutureDial to connect my laptop to the Internet by using my Sprint cellphone as the uplink over the Sprint 3G network. Should I need to connect to the internet anywhere within the Sprint cellphone coverage area, now I can just plug in my cell phone and dial up for rates about 5 times faster than a 56k modem (~250 kbps).
Although I can use the cellphone's built-in web browser and email clients that are already part of the Sprint PCS plan, I can get full page browsing with images and all by using the laptop with it. However, I did notice significant image degradation while using SnapDialer with my laptop, though. The images appeared to be somewhat compressed and grainy, but they are sufficient. While dialed up, the cellphone displays connection status and transfer rates. I noticed a very short idle disconnect time, such that if no internet activity occurred for about 30 to 60 seconds the connection would drop. This may be a means of efficiency and lower bandwidth usage, and hopefully it would help save on minutes used in the Sprint plan.
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You may not want to use Yahaoo for this purpose, but its just an example and any functional domain name will work. The point is that the ping command will continue running in terminal, repeating every one second. Go ahead, try it. Ping is a very simple type of internet communication, so it won't use a lot of time or overhead.
You cellphone normally disconnects connection if you're browsing the web or checking email unless you do a lot of clicking. I suppose this is a built-in mechanism to prevent accidental overuse of minutes, but I find it annoying that I keep having to reinitiate the connection, and that's why I just ping something from a command window and then focus on my browsing or email.