Using of Netconnect in Ubuntu 10.04 series and 10.10 Â is changed now. Before we have to use wvdial to configure netconnect.
Ubuntu has introduced  USBSwitchmode and USBModem this two packages in Ubuntu apt repo.
I think the right package name is usb-modeswitch and it comes with 10.x version by default. I just tried my new ZTE modem and my laptop does recognize it correctly(without any changes to my default installation).