I have stumbled across the “Cellular Providers” wiki page and noticed that it lists no Ukrainian providers. I am unsure whether there may be anyone interested, but I can confirm that the following works.
Is there a reliable way to report “Bands provided”? What else should I test and report? Whom should I tag in this forum to ask to update the wiki?
A note on 3G sunset in Ukraine.
The governmental authority in Ukraine which is responsible for regulating the providers has announced earlier this year that the providers will start turning off 3G to provide more bands for 4G in 2025. Kyivstar announced that they plan to sunset 2G and 3G and has completed that in several towns as a beginning. Vodafone also has some limited plans for 2025. 3mob does not provide 4G and has small coverage. They rely on Vodafone to provide coverage in other areas. It is not clear yet what it their plan.
VoLTE, on Vodafone and Kyivstar, if you’re able to. (… safely, of course).
Also MMS on available networks, if applicable.
Some of that info might be found here, although it could be outdated. The BM818-E1’s frequency bands can be found here, for comparison to the networks’.
Not really. A given carrier may use one band in one area and a different band in a different area. So the only way to determine “bands provided” by detecting the band could involve a lot of travel. As @amarok says, it may be on a carrier’s web site but equally that is technical detail that will be uninteresting for 99.9% of regular customers and it may be out of date on a carrier’s web site and it may change temporarily as part of migration or other corporate activity.
The way I determine it here is using a national RF database that lists the frequencies used by operator on every tower in the entire country.
In the first instance, don’t tag anyone. Just post the info and ask for it to be incorporated in the Wiki.
Another answer: Use “Page History” on the Wiki to see those who have been making edits recently, and tag them.
I would have been happy to do it, so thanks to @amarok for doing it.
Bear in mind that MMS might not work out of the box anyway. So you would need to get MMS working with one provider before you could tentatively conclude that it doesn’t work with other providers if that is the case.
The last time I used it, Cellmapper provided excellent, detailed information about the location of cell sites for each network, the frequency bands available on each cell site and, if I recall correctly, also signal strength data points. The signal strength data was mainly along main roads, as the data was crowd-sourced. Presumably it might have gaps in the cell site location data in very remote areas, too.
Now, though, the website seems to be deeply intertwined into the Google advertising and tracking ecosystem and doesn’t seem to function without unblocking a whole bunch of advertising and tracking domains. I don’t know if it functions when you do unblock them. I gave up trying.
Both Vodafone and Kyivstar have discontinued MMS due to the lack of demand. Neither TriMob, nor Lifecell list MMS in their plans. So, there is no MMS to test.
I installed bm818-tools, it showed VoLTE being enabled under Kyivstar. I switched to 4G-only in modem settings and still can place calls. Apparently, VoLTE works under Kyivstar.
I swapped to Vodafone. The tools showed VoLTE as enabled, but, out of the box, Vodafone does not serve VoLTE, fails to place calls under 4G-only, and falls to 3G under 3G/4G-preferred. Then, I activated VoLTE with a code and received a confirmation SMS. I still cannot place calls under 4G-only but it does not fall to 3G under 3G/4G-preferred anymore. So, VoLTE works, right?
$ bm818-volte-check
chat: Apr 09 23:38:32 +BMRAT: FDD LTE
BMRAT state active FDD LTE
I think the intention of “VoLTE works” is that, you know, it actually works i.e. you can place calls. So if you cannot place calls via Vodafone with VoLTE enabled in both the modem and on the service then, no, VoLTE does not work.
In saying that VoLTE does not work, blame is not being apportioned between phone, modem, reseller where applicable and network, nor is investigation expected. It is just a record of what one (or more) Librem 5 users found - so as to be a guide for other users who are using the same provider.
My guess is that there is configuration somewhere (in the modem firmware?) that is not correct or not up-to-date for VoLTE with Vodafone in Ukraine.
