PHONY PHONE SERVICE
So last week 3G mobile phone reception finally went away where I
live, a little after the official Australian turn-off date at the
beginning of the month. Now it's only 4G and 5G, and 4G reception,
in spite of claims, is proving worse than 3G. My father now can't
make calls inside his house because the signal drops out, although
funnily enough my old mobile broadband modem which doesn't support
the new lower 4G frequency band has still been getting reception.
That might be luck though since in the past it's gone for months
with consistent 4G and then had a week or two of only seeing 3G
signal, so I still need to get my antenna finished (annoyingly the
second-hand antenna signal meter I've got for adjusting it won't
work now because it was 3G as well - I didn't think it could take
me this many years to get things finished).
I documented my original plans for buying a replacement phone to
keep in the car in my post 2023-06-10Facing_4G.txt. In spite of my
best efforts to understand all the complex compatibility
requirements, I was on completely the wrong track and ended up
buying a phone that wouldn't work with my telco (even though it was
branded the same as the one I was already using!). I can't do
phones, somehow even though I know about the theory of the
electronics that work them and the code that crafts them, they've
managed to make such a compatibility nightmare that I just can't
get my head around it.
Not of course helped by the fact that, in this wonderful age of
universal information access, I can't find out any damn thing!
Frequencies, network locking, VoLTE support, it's like pulling
teeth to find them out for the phones, and the telcos themselves
are just brick walls about what they're doing.
Today, thirteen days after the switch-off date, after I've already
got my second 4G phone, I read this article published the day
before:
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/australias-3g-shutdown-why-your-4g5g-phone-is-now-blocked,19159
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The ACMA, department and industry have decided not to properly
address the compatibility issues and will instead now require
people to only use "supported" handsets purchased directly from
their telcos or associated handset partners.
With this policy change, consumers can now no longer use any device
they want from any provider in the world, even if it may work
perfectly.
The telcos get to solely decide what phones you are allowed to use
and where you must have purchased them from.
Optus blocking officially supported devices
Due to the failures by Optus during the 8 November 2023 outage, in
early September, the company began instigating a very regressive
device-blocking policy.
In essence, if Optus (or its partners) didn't sell a phone or test
it, it would be blocked, even if it's a supported hardware model.
Optus is even blocking officially supported phones that are on its
device support list.
If the phone was not purchased from Optus but another telco, it's
blocked, even if it's also a supported model with that other telco.
Phones are being denied all services based on the Type Allocation
Code (TAC) section of the device serial number (International
Mobile Equipment Identity, IMEI) and not the actual real-world
functionality.
Even identical otherwise perfectly compatible models are blocked if
purchased from another telco or retailer.
Even some brand-new phones recently purchased in major retail
stores here have been blocked by Optus and the telcos, those
customers are currently without any 4G service.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
On the justification that some 4G phones run software that's
programmed to switch to 3G for emergency calls, the government
regulator is now requiring telcos to block phones they don't
specifically approve, based on their IMEI. Not just from calls, but
data and SMS as well (so it seems I'm lucky a second time that my
old 4G mobile broadband modem is still working on Telstra).
ACMA, the Australian government's communications/media authority
(also known for blocking public access to random websites it
doesn't like) is now purposefully overseeing a monopoly on phone
sales by our three telcos. If I find a niche phone that someone has
diligently designed to work on the network frequencies in
Australia, it apparantly won't work unless my telco has it on their
whitelist. There's also no hope of me resuming my early plans to
make a phone myself (though I was looking at 2G then so that
wouldn't have lasted past 2018).
When do I find this out? Almost two weeks _after_ 3G is turned off,
so yet another way I could have ended up buying a 4G phone that
didn't work: It could support the frequencies, VoLTE, and be
unlocked, yet get blocked by the telco because it's not a model
they've whitelisted (for Optus maybe even if it's on their public
device support list, apparantly). I was looking as hard as I could
into all this stuff and nowhere did I read about this until that
article was forwarded to me today by my father, who vocally hates
computers and doesn't like to make any attempt to understand the
technical details of these sorts of things.
I mean, I give up, I really do. This is the one, _the_ _one_, piece
of technology that the world is obsessed with, from the poorest
countries of Africa to the top towers of New York, and I just can't
get a grip on anything about it. Except the fact that it's clearly
all a complete rip off from head to toe.
- The Free Thinker
