Re: [PATCH 1/4] DTD changes for mms, prepaid, wap

[Marcel Holtmann <marcel holtmann org>]

Hi Marius,

> >>>>> Keep in mind that we are mainly looking into the possibility to
> >>>>> automatically provision SIM cards the best we can. And this without any
> >>>>> user interaction.
> >>>> When we discuss this, usually when you insert a SIM card into a phone
> >>>> now, the settings are fetched from the SIM card itself (although I have
> >>>> once seen that th e settings were wrong for internet use). Could not
> >>>> modemmanager/networkmanager do this?
> >>> I have not found a single operator that actually has APN settings
> >>> provisioned on their SIM card. There are certain EF specified for these
> >>> details, but all my SIM cards did not have anything provisioned in
> >>> there. Do you have examples?
> >> There are years since I have needed to configure network settings with
> >> my Norwegian SIM cards for use in phones. But i just came across a case
> >> where swedish settings were set in a SIM card for Tele2 which operate in
> >> both Norway and Sweeden.
> > where they in the phone or actually the SIM card. That is a big
> > difference. As I said, I have not seen any operator using the special EF
> > SIM storage for these settings.
> 
> In the SIM card. Both for browsing and MMS retrieval. I think the same
> happened with my local SIM card in South Africa. I guess there are
> standard AT modem commands to get those?

there are no standard AT commands to get these. There are EF storage
with special syntax. However nobody uses it. That is exactly my point. I
think that actually your phone remembered it and not your SIM card.

> >> Missing settings are okay, but if they are incorrect, they should not be
> >> used. Before it was a problem that they used to be WAP APNs, but I guess
> >> people wants to use full internet APNs nowadays even in phones, to be
> >> able to read e-mails etc.
> > If you wrongly configure your device, then that is bad luck. Same goes
> > for the SMSC number. Just bad luck.
> 
> I think here about using this for autoconfiguring the modem, instead of
> the list of countries and operators that appear now. Would be nice if it
> was autoconfigured if there are settings in the SIM card, and if not,
> use the network ID to locate the right entry in the providers XML file.
> 
> I'm not sure here what bad things can happen, maybe wrong charging so
> that it ends up more expensive than expected.

That problem is already solved. At least for us. We separate the MCC+MNC
of the SIM card with the MCC+MNC of the current registered network. So
we always know the right home network even if you are roaming. And
properly set SPN would take care of MVNO that have no own MCC or MNC.

Regards

Marcel