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T-Mobile CDMA network shutting down soon

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Re: T-Mobile CDMA network shutting down soon

#81

Post by oneplane »

Causality1 wrote: post #36
acwan93 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By select handsets, I assume any big name handset, e.g. iPhone, Pixel, Galaxy, would be allowed, but a no-name handset wouldn't be allowed? Isn't this similar to the pre-iPhone days, when if you brought an overseas GSM phone you had to go through some hoops to get it activated with Cingular/T-Mobile? I remember getting handsets from China and Europe and the reseller would have to circumvent something to get it activa…

Generally, but with a lot of exceptions and weirdness. For example, my OnePlus 6 is not supported, but if I modify my IMEI and APN those "impossible" features like VoLTE suddenly start working. Before they stopped automatic activation, I could put my SIM out of a supported phone, put it in an unsupported one, and those features would work for between fifteen minutes and a couple of hours. On the other hand, some hand…

Keep in mind that supported and features are not the same. Even if it technically can work doesn't mean that the provider wants to support it. Sometimes it's a simple as simply not having put the device through the testing process yet, or it simply hasn't been documented. And until it has, they don't want to risk any service costs so they simply don't whitelist it when the user base is insignificant enough.

Re: T-Mobile CDMA network shutting down soon

#82

Post by fullstop »

Causality1 wrote: post #19
acwan93 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seemed strange that T-Mobile would have a CDMA network, until you remembered that it came from Sprint. This seems like good news. I'm glad that starting with LTE all the carriers started agreeing on a single platform with SIM cards. Even though there are little nuances between each carrier, the fact that you can buy a single phone and have it work with the four (three now) major carriers is a big deal.

Not really. There have always been smartphones that supported both GSM and CDMA. The three major carriers not only use different LTE bands, but also Verizon and shortly AT&T (in February) have adopted a whitelist model where only select handsets can be activated on their networks. It's a much less open marketplace than it was five years ago.

That's why I left AT&T. They shut off my daughter's phone, without warning, in the middle of the night because it wasn't whitelisted. Their whitelist is utterly arbitrary, and even brand new phones are not on the list if they happen to be an international version. They explicitly state that certain models of the Samsung Galaxy S20 are not whitelisted.

As for my daughter, she was under the impression that she had until February of 2022 to replace her phone, but it was disconnected five months earlier than anticipated. I'm now with T-Mobile and satisfied. For my location it has better coverage than AT&T did, is significantly faster, and I have unlimited data.

Re: T-Mobile CDMA network shutting down soon

#83

Post by martinald »

ksec wrote: post #74
Dylan16807 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> handsets that don't work with VoLTE It's kind of amazing to watch them keep pushing out half-baked protocols with the details on what phones actually support being so hard to find. I guess the lesson they learned from rolling out LTE phones with no Voice over LTE support is that nobody really cares, which is why they repeated the same issues with 5G and there's all this stuff about "non-standalone 5G".

Well VoLTE was the first time the world moved to an IP based Voice Calling Protocol. So it was hard for everybody. VoNR will hopefully be a lot easier. Not mention the actual VoLTE standard came at a slightly later date than LTE itself. Whitelisting Smartphones by US Carriers is another story.

VoLTE works fine, its the ridiculous rollout strategy that requires every phone to have specific carrier settings in the firmware. This ends up in ridiculous situations where some phones will work on some carriers with VoLTE, but not others (despite both phone + network supporting VoLTE), depending on what firmware you have.

I'm not sure if this was just an Android problem and Google totally dropped the ball, but I cannot understand why there isn't a central database that gets pinged for VoLTE settings dynamically and the phone uses that. Instead, it seems to be need to be shipped in the OS.

iOS is totally fine; but this has totally killed adoption on Android. It's improved recently at least in the UK (last two phones worked out of the box), but previous to that it was a total farce.

Re: T-Mobile CDMA network shutting down soon

#84

Post by KennyBlanken »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #40
mdasen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is mostly about drama around Boost Mobile. T-Mobile wanted to shut down their CDMA network on January 1, 2022. Boost (now owned by Dish) doesn't want to upgrade users that have handsets that don't work with VoLTE. Upgrading users involves sending them notices, giving them options of free handsets, shipping those handsets, getting the users to actually activate them, etc. While T-Mobile gave Boost nearly double t…

> handsets that don't work with VoLTE It's kind of amazing to watch them keep pushing out half-baked protocols with the details on what phones actually support being so hard to find. I guess the lesson they learned from rolling out LTE phones with no Voice over LTE support is that nobody really cares, which is why they repeated the same issues with 5G and there's all this stuff about "non-standalone 5G".

It might be to find info about VoLTE support because VoLTE phones started coming out seven years ago.

The Nexus 6 was the first Nexus/Pixel device to support VoLTE (I seem to vaguely recall the 5 was capable of VoLTE, but no carrier enabled it?), and the iPhone 6 was the first iPhone to do so.

I think you'd be very hard pressed to find a 4G phone that doesn't support VoLTE.

GSMarena usually has the most extensive specifications, however, if you're looking to check a specific phone.

Re: T-Mobile CDMA network shutting down soon

#85

Post by R0b0t1 »

mdasen wrote: post #17
fomine3 wrote: post #12

I surprised that US iPhone 13 still supports CDMA2000 EV-DO. Is it still worth to support?

That's a hard question to give a definitive answer to. In many ways, the answer is "no". However, as with most things in tech, there are always edge cases. Sprint's network (which T-Mobile bought and is integrating into the T-Mobile network) never went fully VoLTE (voice over LTE) so if you had a phone that didn't support CDMA voice and you were on the Sprint network experience and you traveled to one of the rare are…

CDMA is the superior protocol afaict, unfortunately they wanted more in licensing fees at the beginning which stunted it. In any case a phone can support both in software.

Re: T-Mobile CDMA network shutting down soon

#86

Post by montroser »

mdorazio wrote: post #70
coffeecat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The newest car I've ever owned was a 2005 model, so at the risk of sounding ridiculous: Why do cars have cellular radios built-in? Just for the GPS, or for actual communication?

Telematics & remote interaction. Want to get remote diagnostics/problem notifications on your car, have emergency 911 service in the event of a crash, be able to unlock it from your phone, preheat it in the winter, precool it in the summer, get notified when your 16-year old child is driving over 70mph, get software updates for the ECUs in your car, enable remote charging notification & management, etc.? Cellular. No…

Just because the actual mass market embraces these things doesn't mean they're good for us all. The skepticism is about how needlessly dependent it makes our individual cars upon a broad shared resources like CDMA and coprorations' servers, in perpetuity.

Tesla drivers locked out of their cars en mass last week because Tesla servers were down? Okay, it's relatively benign, and maybe it has helped people not get locked out of their cars on the whole, versus how often it locked people out of their cars.

But year after year at DEFCON, it is demonstrated that malicious actors can take remote control of your "connected tech" car, while you're driving it. The terrorism potential alone is scary, aside from all of the mildly troublesome tracking and privacy implications.

I'll trade away precooling my car in the summer in favor of exclusively controlling my own vehicle, thanks.

Re: T-Mobile CDMA network shutting down soon

#87

Post by w0m »

coffeecat wrote: post #64
baloki wrote: post #56

An interesting side effect of these networks shutting down seems to be a lot of car manufacturers have been cheeping out for years and relying on 2G and 3G networks on even quite modern cars, then blaming the network providers when they stop working after being the network is shut off instead of offering upgrades to the telecommunications modules to a more modern standard.

The newest car I've ever owned was a 2005 model, so at the risk of sounding ridiculous: Why do cars have cellular radios built-in? Just for the GPS, or for actual communication?

Yes.

Re: T-Mobile CDMA network shutting down soon

#88

Post by toomuchtodo »

montroser wrote: post #86
mdorazio wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telematics & remote interaction. Want to get remote diagnostics/problem notifications on your car, have emergency 911 service in the event of a crash, be able to unlock it from your phone, preheat it in the winter, precool it in the summer, get notified when your 16-year old child is driving over 70mph, get software updates for the ECUs in your car, enable remote charging notification & management, etc.? Cellular. No…

Just because the actual mass market embraces these things doesn't mean they're good for us all. The skepticism is about how needlessly dependent it makes our individual cars upon a broad shared resources like CDMA and coprorations' servers, in perpetuity. Tesla drivers locked out of their cars en mass last week because Tesla servers were down? Okay, it's relatively benign, and maybe it has helped people not get locke…

Tesla drivers have a keycard or fob they should have with them. Using the app for vehicle access is a convenience.

Re: T-Mobile CDMA network shutting down soon

#89

Post by [deleted] »

coffeecat wrote: post #64
baloki wrote: post #56

An interesting side effect of these networks shutting down seems to be a lot of car manufacturers have been cheeping out for years and relying on 2G and 3G networks on even quite modern cars, then blaming the network providers when they stop working after being the network is shut off instead of offering upgrades to the telecommunications modules to a more modern standard.

The newest car I've ever owned was a 2005 model, so at the risk of sounding ridiculous: Why do cars have cellular radios built-in? Just for the GPS, or for actual communication?

[deleted]

Re: T-Mobile CDMA network shutting down soon

#90

Post by imglorp »

hk1337 wrote: post #8

Not surprising. T-Mobile has always been a GSM network, CDMA is what they inherited from Sprint.

Why did they buy Sprint if it was not for their national CDMA network? Just to snag some subscribers? Were they assuming it would all depreciate away and they'd be left with the tower sites anyway?
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