Re: Back to the Game

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 2011-10-11 at 13:57 +0300, Antti Kaijanmäki wrote:
> Hello List!
> 
> It's been a while, but I've pleased to inform you that I would like to 
> return back to help maintaining mobile-broadband-provider-info.

Great!

> It's heart warming to see how you have kept the database up to date and 
> evolved and embraced it. Thank you! :)

Yeah, it gets quite a few submissions.

> I'm also so happy to see a variety of direct committers in the git log.
> 
> I noticed I still have my access to git.gnome.org, so I committed a 
> couple of fixes. I don't seem to have rights to close the bugs on BGO, 
> though.

Typically when I get a request I do some Google searches to find out if
the request makes sense and just to minimally verify it.  For some of
the smaller operators you can't find a ton of information, but it also
makes for a small diversion from networking stuff :)  But sometimes
you'll get stuff like people submitting entries for providers that
merged with other providers and so in those cases you need to modify
their patches or ask further questions.

I've also seen submissions for empty GSM networks (no APN provided)
because that provider is actually a CDMA network.  CDMA networks *do*
have MCC/MNC numbers, but no APNs, so these aren't valid either.  The
correct thing to do there is add MCC/MNC to the CDMA block DTD.

Stuff like that.  Trust, but Verify.

> There seems to be new tags like <plan> and <usage>. Are those documented 
> anywhere?

Should be documented in the DTD, but perhaps we need more docs.  Other
stuff I'd like to see:

- MMS details
- proxy servers
- SMSC addresses

But those are harder to find on the web.

Dan