FS Freerunner

[Al Johnson]

On Sunday 05 September 2010, David Pottage wrote:
>  On 05/09/10 17:13, xChris wrote:
> >  I know about it.
> > 
> > I had no luck, the FR does not 'see' my 3G SIM (three mobile UK).
> > But the WTF is that a 2005 mobile (Nokia 6320i) CAN use that SIM and the
> > FR can't!
> 
> Is it that the FR can't read the SIM, or can't register with the network.
> 
> Three are well known for blocking all 2G phones on their network, though
> the details of how they do it are fairly vague. One story is that they
> disconnect SIMs that get used in 2G devices, another theory is that they
> have a whitelist of approved devices, and only allow them to register.
> 
> I suggest you try another network.

When I tried a friend's 3 SIM in a FR it wasn't recognised. It did the same in 
his Nokia Communicator, so it isn't unique to the Openmokos. Stick it back in 
a 3G device and it's fine. 3's T&Cs are quite specific about not allowing use 
of non-3G devices. They get their fallback 2G coverage by peering with another 
network (O2?) so they probably pay for that traffic.

The #666 trac entry has a broken link to a test report where IIRC a variety of 
SIMs were tested in Openmoko, Calypso reference board, and another phone. I 
think the conclusion was that there were some SIMs that the calypso could 
support but the FR didn't at the time, and some that it just plain couldn't 
support because they hadn't been standardised when the calypso was designed. I 
could be misremembering, but I couldn't find a working link to that document 
to check.