News items for tag gsm - Koos van den Hout

I just noticed in Network Info II that my android phone does get an IPv6 address from t-mobile. The address is something like 2a02:498:1fe1:9a02:2:3:xxxx:xxxx which is indeed in IPv6 address space allocated to T-Mobile Netherlands.

% Information related to '2a02:498::/29'

inet6num:       2a02:498::/29
netname:        NL-T-MOBILE-20080609
country:        NL

So I tested directly whether I could make an IPv6 connection to my website, but it fell back to IPv4. Network Info II saw no IPv6 route on the phone, but in later checking I also saw no IPv6 route when connected to the wifi at home, where IPv6 works fine. And doing a traceroute to that address from home shows that a core router at xs4all says network unreachable:

 3  0.ae22.xr4.1d12.xs4all.net (2001:888:1:4032::1)  6.105 ms !N  6.063 ms !N *

So T-Mobile has activated some IPv6 address management in their network, but stopped at that point.

Earlier I had the Android application Ham Radio Prefixes - Android Apps on Google Play installed, but it needs some server on the Internet to look up callsigns and determine the country it is assigned to. Sometimes I need to do a lookup off-line, and I noticed fldigi and CQRLOG do that fine when the country data file is installed. So it can be done, I just have to find software that does this right.

On ICQ Podcast Episode 234 - Portable Power Distribution and I heard mention of Pocket Prefix for Android which can be found at Pocket Prefix - Android Apps on Google Play and which works off-line. This was even mentioned on the podcast as one of the advantages. It even gives extra information when available, the given example is that prefix SV is for Greece but SV9 is specific to Crete. Or EA9 is specific to the Spanish enclaves Ceuta and Melilla which are located in Morroco (and therefore count as a contact with the African continent).

It's a nice application, thanks to Derek Turner G4SWY!

I switched the work smartphone from a Nokia E71 to an HTC Desire.

One thing I always liked in the 'business' Nokia phones was the option to switch the 'Profile' for a set time, switching back to the previous profile afterwards. The 'Profile' is the whole of settings for ringtone, vibrate and other notification options. What I used it for was setting a quiet profile at the beginning of a meeting and having it revert back at the appointed time of the end of the meeting.

So I wanted this on Android. It was a bit of searching and asking, but I found Llama - Location Profiles which does 80% of the work: switching profiles automatically based on location (mainly using cell towers), time of day, other events. And it can do what I want: stay at a certain profile for a given time.

Eindelijk na zoveel jaar GSM standaard in Nederland een nuttige toepassing van cell broadcast: NL-Alert gebruikt cell broadcast om berichten aan iedereen in een bepaald gebied te sturen. Lang was de regio informatie de enige werkende toepassing hiervan, maar die is vorig jaar uitgeschakeld.

Maar blijkbaar hebben de ontwerpers van moderne telefoons gedacht dat cell broadcast zo weinig gebruikt werd dat ze het wel weg konden laten uit telefoons. In het overzicht van hoe mobiele telefoons in te stellen voor NL-Alert staan veel nieuwe telefoons als 'ondersteunen het (nog) niet' en wat oudere telefoons doen het prima.

"This phone is tapped"
Image under Creative Commons cc-by-sa license, via File: This phone is tapped.jpg - Wikimedia commons

Strong opinions in That's Not My Phone, It's My Tracker - NYTimes.com:

THE device in your purse or jeans that you think is a cellphone — guess again. It is a tracking device that happens to make calls. Let’s stop calling them phones. They are trackers.

Maybe the current wave of news about the high numbers of people in the US targeted by data requests to cell phone companies by law enforcement will also get some followup in the Netherlands and get some more numbers out in the open.

See also: Cell Carriers See Rise in Requests to Aid Surveillance - NYTimes.com:

In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.

Commented on Carriers Aim to Curb the 'Bill Shock' of Excessive Roaming, Data Charges | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

My comment about earlier forms of 'bill shock':

Just like the 'bill shock' on the first telephone bill after you got a modem. Or when discovering out of area BBSes, or Compuserve. History just repeats itself, but this time it is news.

Het valt me ineens op: bij vodafone zie ik niet meer de regio waar ik ben (netnummers) als cellbroadcast. Dat was natuurlijk al jaren en jaren niet echt commercieel nuttig meer omdat de abonnementen waarin dat uitmaakte uitgefaseerd waren maar ik vond het altijd wel grappig. Het was wel leuk om te zien en heel soms nuttig omdat je kon zien of je soms veel van 'mast' aan het wisselen was of op een mast ver weg zat.

A bit of playing on a friday afternoon: getting the Nokia E71 and Asterisk to play with eachother. I needed the power of google to make it work, because you need to link a SIP profile with internetdialing before it actually works. So I used the walkthrough at Using a Nokia E71 with Asterisk (3G or WiFi) by Leif Madsen. And now the handset registers to the demo asterisk and I can play with it. Another way to drain the battery! And it allows for accessing cool asterisk tricks from my mobile phone.

Just tested whether the Nokia E71 I use does IPv6. Yes, it acquires a global IPv6 address over wifi which can be pinged. And that is it. No application prefers IPv6, and in the first test a v6-only destination is unreachable. But.. this is an artifact of the connection manager I use (wuh?). The builtin browser can visit IPv6-only pages when I force it to use the home wifi. Normally I use a connection profile which includes 3G options and IPv6 makes the connection manager switch to 3G, with KPN not yet offering this. And dual-stack pages are still visited via IPv4. Same with putty for symbian: it only uses ipv6 when no A record is found and it can only reach the site when I force it to use wifi.

Ik ben blij dat ik geen mobiel Internet van T-mobile gebruik: T-Mobile wil websites laten betalen voor doorgifte - Bits of Freedom waar ik mijn eigen commentaar aan heb toegevoegd (het lijkt weer ouderwets "bellheads versus netheads").

Ook een mooie actie: Neelie Kroes krijgt van een mobiele aanbieder een sms die de regels over hoge tarieven wel erg typisch uitlegt. Jammer voor die provider dat Neelie Kroes zelf die regels heeft (mee-) bedacht.