As its name suggests, picocom is a minimal dumb-terminal emulation pro-
gram. It is, in principle, very much like minicom(1) , 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.