Re: Problems provisioning APN from SIMs

[Alex J Lennon <ajlennon@dynamicdevices.co.uk>]

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On 05/06/2015 10:29, Alex J Lennon wrote:
>
> On 05/06/2015 01:48, Denis Kenzior wrote:
>> Hi Marcel,
>>
>>> The actual MCC and MNC assignments are ITU T E.212 and the (U)SIM
>>> Header of the ICCID is ITU T E.118 document.
>>>
>>> And as a side note, the (U)SIM Header is between 6 and 7 digits. The
>>> MNC is between 2 and 3 digits.
>> So in theory E212 should be enough.  Each operator (MVNO or otherwise)
>> should have its own MCC/MNC identifier.  However, this practice came
>> in too late to the game, so this is not true in reality.
>>
>> Many operators assigned MVNO SIMs out of their pool, resulting in
>> chaos.  Hence why DBs resort to playing tricks with EFspn, EFgid1, etc.
>>
>> I suspect newly issues SIMs do not have this problem, but it might
>> still be relevant for SIMs issued in the past.
> Thanks Denis, Marcel. I appreciate the responses.
>
> So, in essence there seems no good way to do this in the general case.
> The core problem is that multiple operators have the same MCC/MNC, and
> this is a result of virtual operators piggy-backing on top of
> established operators and being given the same MCC/MNC.
>
> The mobile-broadband-providers XML document accurately expresses this,
> but as a result provides multiple providers with the same MCC/MNC code
> and there needs to be a good way to distinguish between them.
>
> Using the display name may work but strikes me as a potential can of
> worms as this does not seem particularly controlled.
>
> For now I may just have to remove the virtual operators from the copy of
> mobile-broadband-providers I use.
>
> Thanks/Regards, Alex
>
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fwiw mobile-broadband-provider-info has now been updated to give O2 and
Vodafone preference over the ASDA Mobile and Giff Gaff virtual operators.

ref: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=750330

So with a patch for Ofono to support multiple APNs and this latest
database O2/Vodafone SIMS should work out of the box in the UK.

Regards, Alex