Re: ANNOUNCE: libmbca and mobile-broadband-provider-info

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Sat, 2008-08-30 at 03:34 -0700, Daniel Qarras wrote:
> Hi Antti,
> 
> > What is libmbca
> > ===============
> > libmbca provides Mobile Broadband Configuration Assistant which is a
> > GObject and GtkAssistant based utility that splits the configuration of
> > a new mobile broadband connection into small easy steps. In the simplest
> > form libmbca offers an frontend for mobile-broadband-provider-info.
> 
> for my edification could you please describe a bit more use case scenarios when this kind of configuring is precisely needed? Sorry if I sound ignorant but currently with NM things are working for me simply so easily that it's hard to imagine how to make things better (at least in this single use case of mine):
> 
> 1. I'll take my mobile phone and connect it to my laptop with a serial/usb cable (I don't have any Bt devices)
> 2. NM shows GSM connection as one alternative that I can use with zero configuration just by clicking it

Providers use different APNs for different billing and features.  Some
have a "WAP" APN that allows limited access to web sites and features
and additional APNs for those that have paid for full internet access.
Sometimes you can get wrongly billed if you use the wrong APN, or your
stuff just won't work if you use the wrong APN.  GSM does require a bit
more configuration than CDMA at least.

While it may work seamlessly for many users, it's not going to work
seamlessly for lots of uses when we actually start supporting mobile
phones, because phones are quite a bit more diverse (and quirky) than
mobile broadband cards.

> To achieve this the cable must be registered obviously in hal-info and when selecting "GSM" from NM it uses the subscription that I have in SIM attached to my phone.

Right, NM will use the default.  But often that default is not actually
the one you need to use.  Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't.

> For some cables that support both GSM/CDMA the detection is still being worked on hal/NM (last time I checked, but probably coming anyway) and I'm not sure how could I use any other subscription that is not hardwired into my SIM.

You can tell the phone to do whatever you want the phone to do, it
doesn't really matter what's stored in the SIM or not.

Dan