Re: FC8

[Stefan Seyfried <seife suse de>]

Dan Williams wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-04-26 at 09:49 +0100, Luke Sheldrick wrote:

>> Anyways it has detected my inbuilt 3g modem in my Dell D420, and amazingly just connected... without the need to enter the APN or anything else?

Yes, that's really scary, since you are not knowing which provider it is going
to use. Well, you'll know once you get the bill ;-)

The card normally just uses the APN that's already stored in the SIM profile.

But what i'd like to know: how did you enter the PIN for your SIM card? I was
not able to connect until i entered the PIN first with umtsmon or comgt.

> I don't believe you need the APN except in certain circumstances like
> roaming or other less-common configurations.  We've got somebody working
> on a mobile wizard that should be able to select the right APN for you
> though if you need it.

Different APNs often mean different billing schemes - for my no-limit flat
data plan i need a different APN than for the normal, data volume charged data
plans. Guess what APN was stored in the SIM when i got it...

>> Was just wondering if it should show the network name, i.e. T-Mobile? and is there a way to get it to show the signal strength?
> 
> Yeah, both of these would be nice things to have.  Unfortunately, some
> of that is blocked on the card vendors themselves becoming a bit more
> open.  Most cards do not allow you to retrieve information about the
> connection while you're connected, unless you use a proprietary protocol
> that you must license from the vendor.

Please quantify "most cards". From the ~10 cards i have, only one, the Novatel
X870 which only has one usable port, has this problem (but you can still
select the provider and check signal strength before connecting).
All other cards (Option, Sierra Wireless, Huawei) have two usable ports and
you can use one of them to query for network data while being connected.

This is also working for a long time in UMTSmon and Klaas would probably be
happy to answer questions about the cards and provide contacts into the
industry, if needed.

>  We're trying to pry some bits of
> those open, but it may take a while.  There are a couple avenues though.

I think that by just using the bits that are readily available, a much better
user experience would be possible today.

Regards,

	Stefan

-- 
Stefan Seyfried
R&D Team Mobile Devices            |              "Any ideas, John?"
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Nürnberg | "Well, surrounding them's out."

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