Comment 75 for bug 430011

There is a launchpad bug report for the E220 at bug #449394. It contains a link to an E220 firmware in comment 10. After upgrading their modem's firmware to the version available at this link, many people reported their E220s were now working. If you have a Vodafone branded modem you may want to use the firmware linked to in comment 24 of that bug instead. You may also need a 2.6.31-15 or later kernel, but you mentioned you are using 2.6.32-11 so you should be fine in that regard. There a few other workarounds/tricks among the various comments too. Also see comment 31 in that bug.

Unfortunately the upstream bug at http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14499 seems to have stalled, although perhaps that is due to the success of the firmware updates. It seems that Huawei's original firmware was not fully compliant with the USB specification set by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF). There is short page on the USB-IF at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_Implementers_Forum if you are interested.

If it doesn't work instantly after upgrading, _then_ follow SP's instructions in comments #71 and #72.