Questions about Dogwood and phone calls

One of us should take a pic with them duct taped together on the back and post it as if it were real. (We can wait for April Fool’s day.)

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I think, 4 would be more realistic, as you need some room for a bracket to hold them (as I expect you want to be able to change them without using tape). A special back-plate could be made to allow access to the battery compartment without removing the whole back (bracket could be part of it - 3D print as one). It’s nice that the size allows it… almost like it was planned… :thinking:

And about that picture… You mean like this?

Thanks @lipu - it’s not like we don’t have a month and a half to kill (at least)…

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I don’t know if this has been discussed elsewhere yet, but with no voLTE capability, that means that in the U.S., the phone won’t work on T-Mobile as of January 2021, or on AT&T as of February 2022, right? Verizon already requires voLTE/HD voice, so it’s out of the picture, too.

Edit: And T-Mobile has already started disallowing any non-voLTE new activations on its network (since August).

How is that in Europe? I can’t find any mention of a voLTE capabilty being required over here.
If such a restriction would exist, this would be pretty serious - as in leaving the L5 dead in the water.

Any thoughts on this from the Purism offices?

Exactly, that’s the picture I was hoping for!

As I understand it, this will depend on when (or if) a country’s carriers retire their 3G networks in favor of 4G, and will likely be different for each country/carrier.

Seems that here 3G shutdown is coming in a few years too (depending on service providers - some sooner some have no plans yet) but reading form the carrier web pages. 2G on the other hand is left alone since 3G is the one which frequencies are wanted to be used for 4G. A lot of IoT and stuff need the older 2G and 3G so sone of them is often still left standing.

But, since voLTE is used only if possible, and it reverts (at least here) to 2G/3G for voice and 4G for data if not, I’m not really worried - calls will work and data will flow, just not using voLTE.

Here is a list of sunsetting 2G and 3G around the world (check your carrier for more info).

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If providers start banning non-voLTE phones, it will be a problem for the L5…

From my understanding, the modems used in the Librem 5 have VoLTE support to some degree but there is some software work to be done for it to be usable.

But @dos can correct me on this.

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PLS8 has VoLTE support advertised. BM818 does not - it internally has some preliminary support, but needs compatibility testing and configuration in order to work internationally.

From our software point of view, there’s no such thing as VoLTE. It’s the modem’s job to handle it and it’s transparent to the software running on the CPU.

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So, am I right in thinking that the Gemalto might be the best bet when it comes to picking a modem (for Europe, in my case) - even though the Broadmobi supports more (quite a few as a matter of fact) frequencies?

To put @dos in other words (and do correct me if I’m wrong), the L5 is good: even at worst it’s only about changing the modem.

Is the BM818 situation regarding voLTE such that Purism has nothing to do with it and we can only wait and hope for news from somewhere? Will it cause a delay? Will it be a firmware upgrade kind of thing or…?

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It sounds like what is really needed is a robust IP calling infrastructure that bridges calls to the POTS network. Now that would be a good feature for a $99/month AweSIM.

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Just got my Librem 5 set up with a phone line, however due to the AT&T not knowing how to use it, it’s currently not got cellular internet. I don’t mind this for now as I rarely leave the house, and it’s already shown that it works great in calls and texting. I think this is a teething pain and has more to do with AT&T then with anyone else, but just encase, use a sim with a line etc already set up, and get the new one set up with your old phone. That should hopefully get around this issue.

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So much for tethering and mobile hot spot. Should I look at T-Mobile or will the teething fix it with AT&T?

@dylanlesterpvcs,
I added your info to the wiki:

Did you use your existing SIM or did you register a new SIM when using the Librem 5 with AT&T? Did you have to change any APN settings? Do you know whether you have tested 2G (GSM), 3G or 4G (LTE)? Do you know which bands you have tested?

No idea, I think this just comes down to the fact the guy could not figure out how to set it up due to it not conforming to his “How to set it up on android” guide.

New sim, the guy could not figure out how to set it up. The APN settings were the issue, he could not figure out how to put them in. Currently it is using 3G, I’m not sure what the bands are if you tell me how to check I will.

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Hopefully Purism working with AweSIM will be able to give us the right APN setting for AT&T and T-Mobile.

We discussed on another forum thread how to find what cellular bands are being used, but we still haven’t figured out how to do it or even the command to show which protocol (GSM, UMTS, LTE, etc) is being used.

For the Gemalto, the AT Command Specification is available somewhere on the internet for download (as I did so - but I think you might have to create a (temporary) online account with them). I haven’t been able to find the same thing for the Broadmobi.

You might try AT^SMONI but unfortunately niche AT commands can be unstandardized.

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