The Xiaomi doesn’t work anymore, that’s the point. It is a M10 lite. It was a great little phone that was running Lineage without a hiccup. Degoogled.com sell great phones and good to deal with.
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Is that because it genuinely is 3G only or because Telstra is just high-handedly blocking it? (I have heard reports that some Xiaomi phones that would otherwise work are now not working because Telstra is blocking them - and I suspect that that is what is happening here. I guess there’s an outside chance that it will work on one of the other two networks. Have you tried that?)
Is that model recent enough that the manufacturer / the vendor may be able to resurrect the phone by issuing a firmware update (if indeed there is any actual change needed on the phone before Telstra will accept it)?
Whether that is relevant to @SageOwl depends on what country he is in - as this whole mess is Australia-specific.
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This Xiaomi is 4G and VoLTE compatible. I checked all of that. I bought it from the Degoogled guys and Telstra, I read, have been blocking phones bought overseas. I read an article in the last couple of days about Telstra blocking Xiaomi in particular. Itvis also blocked by Vodafone so I’m buggered.
The phone is about two years old but was a dual sim beauty for work. I’m buying a pixel 7a which will let me have work and personal sims, this one with Graphene whereas the Xiaomi was Lineage.
Telstra should be nationalised as this has been a disaster. A bit like Qantas really (gratuitous slur for the hell of it!)
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I know it is an unattractive prospect but is there any way to find out from Telstra why they are blocking that particular phone? In other words, what is “wrong” with it in Telstra’s view? What is/are its technical failings? If there is anything that needs changing then maybe you could follow that up with the vendor / manufacturer.
I mean seriously a two year old phone should not suddenly be blocked and have to get thrown in the bin but without information it may not be possible to make progress.
To be fair to Telstra, if Voda is blocking the phone too then renationalisation isn’t really addressing the underlying issue.
If you can find the original invoice, forward it to ACMA for reimbursement. 
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Telcos are on a long list of things I’d like to see nationalised!
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I’m in Samford Valley and using a Belong sim.
Just got around to checking L5 phone calls - none in or out.
Will start looking for solution to this later on.
My other mobile is a Pixel 3 and stills works fine on same network.
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Never heard of Belong, so I had to research it:
There is a prominent banner about the 3G closure that leads to this page:
You will likely have to enable VoLTE on the Librem 5 using bm818-tools to be unblocked from Telstra’s network, if it has not been done already.
Does mobile data work? That is, are you registering on the mobile network at all? (In order to be certain of this you may want to kill WiFi temporarily.)
Were calls working before the 3G shutdown?
Otherwise, as Frankly says, you do have to enable VoLTE explicitly. It is disabled by default.
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I’m with Belong too. I can confirm that after enabling VoLTE, I have absolutely no issues with phone calls, SMS, MMS, etc where I am. That said, I’ve had Belong email me saying that my phone doesn’t support 4G, and that they’ll deactivate my service on the 28th of November. Have you had any similar emails, or is that just me?
When I have time to sit on hold for an hour+, I intend to call them from the Librem 5, prove that my device does in fact support 4G, and get them to stop trying to stuff me over.
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Sorry I should have mentioned that Belong is owned by Telstra and the inexpensive part of its network.
Thank you for the pointers to sort the issues. I did email Purism support on this 3G issue before I thought to look on this forum first. I hope to get a reply in a couple of days and maybe an explicit guide to the bm818-tools to do the fix.
Cheers
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Short answer is NO mobile data doesn’t work either. Sloppy late night thinking that if mobile is updating OS then mobile data is working. 
Yes calls were working before 3G shutdown.
Will be going the enable VoLTE explicitly route in due course.
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Yes I did get an email from Belong - here is a quote:-
" The Telstra 3G network closure is just one month away.
As you know, you need to upgrade your phone before then (Shi BroadMobi BM818 - mobileno).
But because everyone loves a perk:
If you upgrade to a compatible phone before Sunday 6 October 24, we’ll add three months’ credit to your account. Nice."
Needless to say I didn’t take up the offer…
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Not a good sign. Can you tell whether you are registering on the mobile network correctly?
How to enable VoLTE: No Dial when making call on Librem 5 - #12 by irvinewade
Obviously you will need to be on WiFi to do that.
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As of this morning my L5 on Telstra is no longer able to send or receive calls. Yesterday it was fine with calls but started to become patchy with text messages. It gave me some grief last week but came good and was working perfectly for all functions on Thurs/Fri/Mon this week. Then a decline in reliability up to today with no call capability. I have no idea why as I haven’t done anything to the phone as I’m not a tinkerer once I get it right. Its a battle that I suspect is not of the phone’s making but rather the telcos.
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I suspect that they have blocked it as it’s not an approved device for VoLTE. That’s my issue here in Canada.
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I suspect you may be right. The obvious two questions would be 1. Is the phone able to register on the mobile network? 2. Are you getting mobile data? If “no” to the first question then I think you need to ring Telstra and ask them whether they have blacklisted your phone.
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FYI, the issue here in Australia is not whether it’s an approved device for VoLTE but whether it is successfully able to call emergency services via VoLTE. This of course is not something that any user can readily test. (In other words, VoLTE may be working fine and the telco knows it and the telco is happy with the use of VoLTE on that phone but if the phone can’t call emergency services via VoLTE then by law the entire service must be blocked.)
Edit: PS This is something that the government announced just a few days ago. So there is a lot of confusion between
- my phone doesn’t work because it is 3G only
- my phone doesn’t work because it has been blacklisted for the reason covered in the first paragraph
- my phone doesn’t work because something else among a zillion other things is wrong
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The phone is getting the “4G” in the top line. I appear to be able to receive texts but sending them they don’t always get to their destination. I can’t be sure that I’d be getting all incoming texts as I can only test from a couple of phones. I can ring Telstra of course but I get a trauma response just thinking about it.
Because I need reliability I have a google pixel 7a with Graphene arriving tomorrow from overseas which is guaranteed to work (we’ll see). I’ll begin to use this one because I need the phone to work. I’ll still play with the L5 on the Vodafone or Optus network and see if things come good.
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You and me both, mate. 
You can’t meaningfully test on the Optus network yet because Optus is phasing out 3G over some months unless you are certain that 3G is already gone in your area on the Optus network. The same applies on the Vodafone network if your plan involves sometime use of the Optus nework i.e. roaming to Optus in areas where the Vodafone network is too sparse.
Edit:
I suggest checking with Settings / Mobile / Modem Details where you should see Carrier, Network Type, Network Status.
I’m not in a position to know for sure what these look like when you are blacklisted but I think that you have not been blacklisted and that your problems lie elsewhere, although those problems may well relate to the 3G shutdown.
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Shows Telstra network type is ‘lte’ and registered on the network. It looks ok.
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