Re: Problems provisioning APN from SIMs
On 05/06/2015 01:48, Denis Kenzior wrote:
Hi Marcel,
>
> The actual MCC and MNC assignments are ITU T E.212 and the (U)SIM
> Header of the ICCID is ITU T E.118 document.
>
> And as a side note, the (U)SIM Header is between 6 and 7 digits. The
> MNC is between 2 and 3 digits.
So in theory E212 should be enough. Each operator (MVNO or otherwise)
should have its own MCC/MNC identifier. However, this practice came
in too late to the game, so this is not true in reality.
Many operators assigned MVNO SIMs out of their pool, resulting in
chaos. Hence why DBs resort to playing tricks with EFspn, EFgid1, etc.
I suspect newly issues SIMs do not have this problem, but it might
still be relevant for SIMs issued in the past.
Thanks Denis, Marcel. I appreciate the responses.
So, in essence there seems no good way to do this in the general case.
The core problem is that multiple operators have the same MCC/MNC, and
this is a result of virtual operators piggy-backing on top of
established operators and being given the same MCC/MNC.
The mobile-broadband-providers XML document accurately expresses this,
but as a result provides multiple providers with the same MCC/MNC code
and there needs to be a good way to distinguish between them.
Using the display name may work but strikes me as a potential can of
worms as this does not seem particularly controlled.
For now I may just have to remove the virtual operators from the copy of
mobile-broadband-providers I use.
Thanks/Regards, Alex