Re: Problems provisioning APN from SIMs

[Denis Kenzior <denkenz@gmail.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2145 bytes --]

Hi Alex,

On 06/03/2015 07:07 AM, Alex J Lennon wrote:
> Hi,
>
> A request for some advice.
>
> We're having trouble provisioning APNs for SIMs from certain Telcos, and
> it seems to be because of the ordering of providers in serviceproviders.xml
>

Ordering should have nothing to do with it.

> Vodafone and O2 are cases in point. SIMs from either of those two
> telcos, used in the UK, will fail to default to the standard APNs upon
> provisioning.
>
> In the case of Vodafone it is because an ASDA Mobile provider is present
> before the Vodafone provider and both have the same MNC.
>
> It's similar with O2, excepting that in this case there's a Giffgaff
> provider before the O2 provider which thus is used for the APN.

oFono's provisioning logic is very conservative.  We do not allow 
duplicate contexts.  Thus if the database contains multiple matches for 
a MCC/MNC pair, the provisioning will fail.  The way to to deal with 
this is to extend the database with additional identifying information. 
  E.g. SPN.  I believe we added the SPN field to 
Mobile-Broadband-Provider-Info XML DTD.  But I haven't been paying much 
attention whether the database has been properly populated with this 
field since then.

>
> I suspect our use case is similar to many others. We have a headless
> embedded Linux board and we want an installation technician to be able
> to put a SIM in, power the unit, and have everything else automated.
>
> It looks like we may have to implement a custom serviceproviders.xml,
> which would be a shame.
>
> I am wondering if there are any other algorithmic or configuration
> alternatives we can look at, such as Ofono trying different contexts
> until one works? Or some additional Ofono provisioning configuration?
>

oFono can use any information present on the SIM to try and figure out 
the SIM provider.  We already provide MCC, MNC and SPN to the 
provisioning plugin.

However, this really depends on the underlying provisioning database to 
contain this information and do so in such a way that duplicates are not 
possible.

Regards,
-Denis