Is Purism’s phone service down for anyone else? I haven’t been able to use data or make a call for the past two days. Support has told me first that service would be restored in at most two hours (yesterday), then that AT&T had promised to resolve the problem within a few hours (today), and the service is still down. I get that Purism doesn’t have any control over how fast AT&T fixes the problem, but this has gone on for a worryingly long time.
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Yes. My service has been down for a couple of days, as has my wife’s. Just wanted to confirm that this is not an isolated thing. Hopefully our friendly Purism folks can get AT&T to provide some monetary restitution for suspending our service for a couple of days without warning. 
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I hope so, 2-3 days of downtime for cell service is almost unheard of outside of severe weather or cyberattacks. But in this case it looks like AT&T just suspended Purism’s accounts and won’t re-enable them even though they’re apparently telling Purism they will.
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It’s fun to hate on the big telecom companies, but it seems way more likely to be a Purism problem than an ATT problem. I’ve had Cricket wireless for about 10 years (since before they were bought by ATT), and I’ve never had a problem like this.
It’s certainly possible. Whether it’s Purism’s fault or not, if this lasts much longer I’m going to have to start looking for another carrier.
Mine’s down too. What’s funny, on Purism’s website, it shows my AweSIM status as active, but my last order date as May 17, 2022, with my next payment due date as January 3, 2023. I went back and looked at my credit card history and confirmed that May 17 was the last time Purism auto drafted for my AweSIM. Hadn’t had a break in service until now.
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Down as well. This is the second time in two months for me. As another note, I attempted to port out my phone number to another provider and was never able to successfully do it after weeks of frustration and stress. If you leave purism, give yourself 3-4 weeks to port out your number, and don’t be surprised if they can’t figure it out.
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This earlier this year published info might be still related: “When this occurs, it is expected that some devices which are configured to attach to the network as voice-centric devices will no longer be able to connect to the AT&T network.” I’m just linking here this official note from Thales as it might be relevant to this thread (if so).
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I think that it’s likely that Purism simply didn’t make payments to AT&T. i.e. It’s much more likely that this is a problem with Purism than it is a problem with AT&T.
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Given the speculation, I think the message sent out by Purism earlier today is relevant as well:
Dear AweSIM/SIMple customer,
If you have received this email, you have been part of an extended
outage with our AweSIM and SIMple cellular services due to a problem
with our upstream network provider. Previously, we were informed that
the issue had been resolved and we sent an email to you to that effect.
Since then we have learned that the issue has not been resolved and that
it is related to a dispute between our upstream network provider and the
carrier.While this dispute has nothing to do with Purism, we and all of you have
been affected by it. Many of us are also AweSIM users and completely
understand the frustration and inconvenience a prolonged outage like
this can create. We are aggressively exploring any and all options to
restore service to everyone as soon as possible, including the drastic
step of moving to an entirely new network if that becomes necessary.We are very thankful for everyone’s patience and understanding during
this unexpected, and unprecedented outage. We will contact you again
soon once we have a path and timeline to restoring service.With best regards,
Purism, SPC, Operations and Support
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So there’s a middleman between Purism and att, and they’re fighting.
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Ok, good. It’s not just me. When I tried to make a call, I got a message that my coverage was suspended, but the subscription showed as active. Then, I discovered the email in my inbox.
Where do you get the idea there is a middleman between Purism and AT&T?
That was the impression I got too. See
a dispute between our upstream network provider and the
carrier.
so it looks like the hierarchy goes Purism -> Upstream Network Provider -> Carrier (AT&T).
Why Purism wouldn’t just get its service directly from AT&T, I don’t know.
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Maybe I’m wrong, but I understood “our upstream network provider” to be AT&T and “the carrier” to be Purism.
It also says “this dispute has nothing to do with Purism.”
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Right, but I know that Purism has lied, so that means very little to me.
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That’s what it looks like to me. That’s a big WTF. As I read it:
-
“upstream network provider” is an MVNO = “wireless services provider that does not own the wireless network infrastructure”
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“carrier” = AT&T or T-Mobile = owner of the wireless network infrastructure
So the relationship is: you —> Purism —> unnamed MVNO —> AT&T. i.e. An unanticipated layer. I already expressed my view that it was already going to be bad to have Purism between you and the carrier. And now we’ve learned it’s even worse.
In terms of their letter. They say:
I disagree about the word “nothing”. One must remember that Purism is the one who chose (and has a contract with) this extra layer (MVNO?) and that Purism didn’t reveal this layer to its customers until now.
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Funny that I am part of this extended outage and did not receive this email.
How much should I trust claims that anything is secure with this company when honesty is not there? This has been a good learning experience for me: open source alone is not enough.
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