Trying to connect to breadband wireless using network manager and its not
working (it worked as recently as a month ago).

Look in /var/log/messages I found:

    Aug  7 09:23:22 pharoah kernel: [59686.892920] modem-manager[1530]:
         segfault at 6e5c725c ip 00007f684dd422e8 sp 00007fffb3b050e0
            error 4 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.2400.1[7f684dd33000+45000]