I probably said it already, but for a technology that defines
modern living, it is incredible how much trouble I have with the
mobile phone network. Both keeping a phone in the car for
emergencies working, and for my home internet access via a USB
modem.
Some examples:
* The 4G mobile broadband modem I use is again dropping back and
forth between 3G and 4G, often with months of 3G-only followed by
weeks of 4G reception.
* I thought that was due to it not supporting the lower 700MHz
(B28) 4G frequency band adopted by Telstra after it was made, but I
had a chance to try one of the Nokia dumb phones which supported
all the current Telstra frequencies and it was going down to zero
bars on 4G too. Except it wasn't smart enough to fall back to 3G at
that point, and actually did drop out during calls until it was
manually set to 2G/3G only mode. Bloody hopeless!
* So far I've mainly used Telstra-branded devices, locked to the
Telstra network. Unlocked options are particularly limited for USB
mobile broadband modems. These have always worked with network
re-sellers using the Telstra network, which I use for my emergency
phone SIM because one is much cheaper for long-expiry credit than
Telstra themselves. Now it seems Telstra have changed it so that
their new locked phones don't work unless you're actually a Telstra
customer, even if you're still trying to use Telstra's physical
phone network. Of course this wasn't stated publicly, just by
roumor online. Apparantly it might not apply to Boost, which is
owned by Telstra, but Belong won't work, even though it's also
owned by Telstra. So I basically need a completely unlocked 4G
phone now, and the cheapest of those are Nokias, and for them see
above.
* Activating Telstra SIM cards used to be possible from a device
using the unactivated SIM card to access the internet. It's still
possible to browse the Telstra website before activation, but the
activation pages pull in lots of external scripts, and Telstra are
obviously too dumb to whitelist the hosts of them too, so it fails.
But not at the start, right at the end after you've already filled
in all the information. Not a proper error message either, the
usual dim-witted "there's a problem" bullshit. Try too many times,
eg. to try and find out what scripts to allow through NoScript, and
it suddenly refuses to do the ID verification because you've used
up a hidden limit on the number of tries over an unknown period.
Plus they want to send damn email verification codes now. Bloody
bastard website developers!
* Long term readers might remember my solution to Telstra turning
off their page to view remaining internet data for a SIM card
(2021-05-15USSD_Browsing.txt). I was worried it probably wouldn't
work once 3G was turned off. Apparantly there's some sort of
IP-based USSD emulation thing that telcos can use on 4G, but I
don't think the modem I've got supports that. But it turns out
that's irrelevent because about six weeks ago the familiar, but
previously transient, error when I tried to read the remaining data
balance using USSD, became a constant. Then for about a month I'm
just geting nothing back from USSD requests at all. Not even for
the menu showing options (of which the balance was the only
remaining useful one anyway). Telstra has obviously just turned it
off. Without any announcement, of course. So now I'm reduced to
guessing my data usage like driving a car with a broken fuel guage.
I did expect I'll need to set up data metering on my OpenWrt router
before 3G went away, but suddenly that's become a job I need to do
now.
What a damn pain in the neck it all is! In many ways the mobile
network is my bridge to society, even providing my way to make
money via the internet in order to buy things at the shops in town.
It says a lot that just maintaining that bridge is driving me more
crazy by the day. Next year letter delivery services are being cut
back to every other day, so even the alternatives are going away.
At least there is still an old copper line to a weathered old POTS
phone exchange running to this house, for so longs as its
increasingly-scratchy relays last. Probably still compatible with
old rotary pulse-dial telephones, and in my case connected to an
abandoned rental Telstra Touchfone that's likely older than me.
Given how things went trying to get tyre quotes online, that may
still be the best way to do some things anyway, as much as I hate
trying to scribble notes down while people talk. What a silly world.
