Entering the country again I found that my Sprint / EVDO was not working anymore. Of course I had been stupid enough to upgrade to 10.4.11 while I was gone. Overall I am not even sure what actually caused the problem. Sprint was trying to be helpful, but had no clue. I spent fifty minutes on the phone with them. Actually only 5 minutes o those I was on hold. Somehow they changed their account system, their server kicks out a 500 error, their system assumes a cellphone to send a text message with a confirmation to. etc.
I got my EVDO going with the help of this helpful post. These were my steps:
1) System Preferences -> Network
2) Show: Network Port Configurations
3) deleted Novatel Wireless CDMA ( I had 2 !)
4) inserted Novatell U720 Modem and got “A new network port has been detected” message
5) Seleting this in “Show: Network Status” and in PPP tab enter phone number #777
6) in PPP Options … enable “Send PPP echo packets” and “use TCP header compression”
7) under Modem tab select “WWAN Support” as a Modem
8) enable ‘show modem status in menu bar’
This did do the trick. Reads longer and more complicated than it actually is.