Telnet is not fully transparent - simple alternative for PPP/TCP ?

Hello,

I am trying to set up PPP over a remote GPRS modem (classical), but
'telnet -8' still interprets 0xFF as the command character. Then I
tried at a shell prompt:
$ kermit -0C "eightbit, set host 10.21.9.92 1001, if fail exit 1,
connect"
and it hangs at the first PPP LCP, just like this:

<capture>
[root@testmanager ~]# kermit -0C "eightbit, set host 10.21.9.92 1001,
if fail exit 1, connect"
Trying 10.21.9.92... Reverse DNS Lookup... Failed.
Negotiations.. (OK)
Connecting to host 10.21.9.92:1001.

ESCAPE CHARACTER IS DISABLED

----------------------------------------------------
at

OK
atd*99#

CONNECT 115200
~
</capture>

After that I have to do a kill -9.

My question: is there a "simple" alternative? I intend to handle
initialization + dialing in a separate script and launch pppd after
getting the "CONNECT 115200" indication. Something along the lines of
netcat, but 8-bit-clean.

Any ideas?

arielCo