As its name suggests, [picocom] is a minimal dumb-terminal emulation
program. It is, in principle, very much like minicom, only it's "pico"
instead of "mini"! It was designed to serve as a simple, manual, modem
configuration, testing, and debugging tool. It has also served (quite
well) as a low-tech "terminal-window" to allow operator intervention
in PPP connection scripts (something like the ms-windows "open
terminal window before / after dialing" feature). It could also prove
useful in many other similar tasks.