9 ms·

When I used to work for a large mobile network, we would spend ages testing the firmware of new devices. Even giants (at the time) like Nokia would release phon

• thih9 4y ago
  Sounds like you’re unhappy that people didn’t want the network to be responsible for checking against bugs. But would the opposite actually be fine? What about people who buy their phones from the manufacturers?
• robertlagrant 4y ago
  How would you have tested 911 dialling? Did you go all the way to a real operator?
  • edent 4y ago
    Yes. From memory we had a specific SIM which was registered with 999. We dialled up, gave a password of the day, and asked them what info they could see about the call. They could see IMSI, IMEI, Cell Location and other things like that. (A couple of decade ago now - my memory might be inaccurate.)
    • ajsnigrutin 4y ago
      Not a lot has changed. You call the regional center (the 911, or in our case, 112 responders), you negotiate a timeframe for your tests (so that there's enough operators there), you tell them the phone number (and other data) that will be used for testing (because the responders get the approximate location of the caller, and might still send someone to check after a call, even if the voice doesn't get through), and then call 911 (112 here) a bunch of times. Also, emergency calls have to work even without a sim card inserted, or with a simcard but still locked (via sim pin), or with an unlocked sim but locked screen, so that had to be tested too.
      • Pasorrijer 4y ago
        This was also a huge issue with BlackBerry 10. We kept getting bugs about 999 being dialed because of the way the screen recognition was... The phone would wake up in your pocket, dial 999 and you'd pocket dial EMS because it was allowed to be dialed from above the lock screen no matter what.
        • secondcoming 4y ago
          I've recently accidentally pocket dialled Emergency Services with a recent Nokia running latest Android. Somehow I manage to swipe the screen up and press the relatively small 'Emergency' button, all without touching the phone. It's really weird.
          • macintux 4y ago
            I’ve accidentally dialed 911 via the side buttons on my iPhone (I put it into the drink holder in a chair, and it was just tight enough to depress the buttons) and at least twice via the buttons on my Watch (trying to swap out the watch bands). Oh, and once my Watch was wet, and it registered my slide motion in the wrong spot. Admittedly this is roughly once every 2 years, but still I’m about at the point where I’d like to disable all automatic emergency services.
  • abruzzi 4y ago
    I don’t know if cell carriers support it, but we test our PBX with 933. It functions like 911 but doesn’t route to emergency dispatch, instead it reads back out E911 data. I also don’t know if, for cell carriers, it functions enough like 911 that issues on the phone like reported here would be evident.
  • myself248 4y ago
    Yes. I used to do this while contracting with Verizon. When bringing up a new tower, we had a bazillion tests to run, and one of the very last was 911. When that day arrived, my supervisor would call the non-emergency line at the PSAP and check in; sometimes I was in the room for this call. Basically we'd make sure they weren't short-staffed, that they had capacity for the calls, etc. Just a formality. When testing actually began, I'd simply tell the operator "This is not an emergency, I'm a tech with Verizon making a test call, do you have time to take this call?", and if they were bouncing off their limit, they'd say no, and I was done for the night. If they said yes, I'd ask them to read back my E911 data. I'd transcribe what they said for later comparison against what was expected, and ask again if they figured they had time to take a few more in the coming minutes. If so, I'd move to the next sector on the tower, lather, rinse, repeat. It was really quite straightforward, and sometimes I'd get the same operator over and over, they'd recognize my DN and just start rattling off coordinates. At the last call of the night we always made sure to thank them, but briefly, and that was that. My report would go back to the datafill engineer, and that was the last step before unlocking the tower for customer traffic.
• moffkalast 4y ago
  The way I see it, this just moves the responsibility for safety to the manufacturers instead of the network. It's on the specific company then to provide adequate QA for their firmware before they release updates, or it reflects badly on them. This fiasco for example, tells me to never buy a Google phone since they apparently don't test their devices properly. I'm not sure why it would be on the network to test devices anyway, it's not like every net card needs to be approved by ICANN or something. There should be standards to adhere to, if those are breached on either end, fines should follow.
  • edent 4y ago
    Most people buy their phone from a network provider / carrier. And when someone goes wrong, customers complain to the network - not the manufacturer. That's why networks test firmware. Because they face the complaints and chargebacks when the phone breaks. Mobile networks are, in effect, private networks. Your employer may prohibit certain devices from connecting to their in-office LAN. Or they may insist on specific devices which they know work well with their equipment. Mobile networks can ban equipment which is stolen. I assume they can also de-register an IMEI if the handset if interfering with the network. Most countries have a regulator who can issue fines for disrupting the airwaves. But they are often unable to investigate non-systemic issues.
    • moffkalast 4y ago
      Perhaps staying inside the network is more common in the US, but from a European perspective it's unlikely for a device to stay at one provider at all times. Half the time you're roaming at another network due to missing towers or if you drive 100km and end up in a different country you won't see your original provider at all until you return. As such, all networks must support all devices for the system to retain some shred of functionality and standardisation is key. Providers can't just pick and choose what to support if they want to maintain credibility. I would imagine it makes far more sense for some international org to do reviews, but at the absence of that the manufacturers themselves need to guarantee compatibility or they will be pushed out of the market by those that do.
• izacus 4y ago
  Well, the fact that big American mobile operators outright blocked or delayed updates for months did not go unnoticed. Testing is one thing, but in my first hand experience, many carriers used this "testing" as a convenient way to block phone updates without preloaded bloatware preferring their services or apps they were paid to put on the phones.
  • bestnameever 4y ago
    > many carriers used this "testing" as a convenient way to block phone updates without preloaded bloatware preferring their services or apps they were paid to put on the phones. How were you involved with the update process to know this?
    • aaomidi 4y ago
      We saw the bloat as the end user.
      • nailer 4y ago
        Adding on: phone update 1.1.2 would be released from the phone vendor, with fixes for various bits. Carrier 1.1.2 would be released with undeletable spam apps and undeletable spam bookmarks. We know this because both versions would end on XDA Developers.
      • gonehome 4y ago
        Scott Forstall also talks about this: https://youtu.be/F3Pl8GmKtW8 https://youtu.be/F3Pl8GmKtW8 Basically part of the reason Apple went with AT&T was they were the only carrier willing to let them control the user/feature layer of the stack. The other telecoms would have this giant requirement document they dictated to handset manufacturers - which is why your crappy Motorola flip phone had three way calling buried 7 menus deep that nobody could use. Things got magnitudes better when Apple leveraged their power to take away this control from telecoms. Though they still did agree to adhere to the minimum specs wrt safety/security. The crappy Motorola rockr phone that Jobs hated is what happened when you tried to work with the telecoms.
• WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
  This was one of my first jobs at Blackberry. It was considered the utmost priority for a call to 911 to be clear enough for the other side to hear that you are an employee at a testing facility verifying that the device does work and the other person can hear you and NOT dispatch emergency services.... Cops/EMTs show up, your firmware is junk.
  • edvards 4y ago
    How often did they show up, and who paid the fine?
    • WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
      Not often, and we didn't get fined (they were like three blocks down the road) It was really bad around the VolTE roll-out because the firmwares were pretty junky at that point (like a 10-1 failure rate) so we started doing testing calling from a phone to another (working) phone before doing the emergency services call.
• RicoElectrico 4y ago
  Such things should be under the prerogative of the national telecom regulator body to be checked in the type approval procedure. After all, before EU took the care of this, telecom equipment in European countries had homologation marks of the local FCC equivalents.
• mort96 4y ago
  It's not like months-long delays to get security updates isn't also incredibly dangerous.
  • sneak 4y ago
    Life safety dangerous is different than "malware steals your nudes" dangerous.
    • Bud 4y ago
      Not always. Major data security issues can be life-threatening for people who are in a vulnerable position.
    • Dylan16807 4y ago
      Malware can do more damage than a broken 911. It depends on the circumstances. It's not "life safety dangerous" to leave the house without a phone, and in almost all situations a complete lack of phone is more dangerous than a phone with broken 911.
• progval 4y ago
  > customers couldn't stand the delays associated with testing. They'd see a new firmware had been released and complained Why do customers care about the firmware version?
  • mitchdoogle 4y ago
    Because they want the latest features of the OS on their phone
• ilyt 4y ago
  Wait, shouldn't be something like FCC certifying emission levels not some random mobile network operator ? Or at least company run by them as to not have to repeat test same thing over and over again ?
  • tlb 4y ago
    Emission levels are complicated. There isn't a particular threshold they have to be under. Rather, phones negotiate with the tower to use the minimum power needed to get their signal through, depending on their distance from the tower and other factors. Using lower power means less interference with other phones as well as increased battery life and less RF absorption by the user's head. This negotiation has a lot of parameters that vary between carriers, so carriers legitimately need to test that every model and version of phone works reliably on their network and doesn't just start blasting at full power sometimes, causing other calls to drop.
    • arbitrage 4y ago
      > There isn't a particular threshold they have to be under. This is a patently false thing to say. https://www.fcc.gov/general/cell-phones-and-specific-absorption-rate https://www.fcc.gov/general/cell-phones-and-specific-absorpt...
      • tlb 4y ago
        OK, there's a super-high limit 100x greater than what phone hardware is capable of putting out. But that's not what carriers are testing -- they want to see that it only uses say 0.5 mW, not 1 mW, when close to the base station.
    • AstralStorm 4y ago
      Under 1.2 W/kg in 10g of tissue ICNIRP is the international standard. India has its own in 1g of tissue but I don't know the threshold value off the top of my head.
      • 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• sandos 4y ago
  It used to be true that even when having an unlocked device here in Sweden, the operator actually tested and certified the updates, and I know this because updates used to be released at wildly different times between different operators. I assume this has stopped now that I read this, because I do get security updates straight away, and I get the feeling everyone does.
• Marsymars 4y ago
  I appreciate the value of this, but the incentives are too biased to function properly. I think a good remedy (which would also tackle a number of other conflicts of interests and biased incentives) would be for anti-trust prohibitions on mobile network operators from selling cell phones at all. Let the network operators continue to certify phones, like hardware manufacturers do with hard drives, memory, etc., dimmer manufacturers do with LEDs, etc. Make the certification tests, steps and costs transparent to both device manufacturers and the public.
• dcow 4y ago
  And I hope we never go back. That phase of mobile phone history was unbearable and carriers insufferable. If issues are slipping through, it’s manufacturers who should be held to account for their faulty devices. And if faulty firmware/software is a persistent problem, then society should step in and regulate.
  • 90d 4y ago
    Wouldn't that regulation seem exactly like "going back" to most people?
• trasz2 4y ago
  The problem with operators is not only that they often delayed fixing critical bugs for no good reason; they also liked to add maliceware. I remember a Nokia phone with one key dedicated to trick users into starting it by accident, which of course was billed. Apple preventing network operators from breaking their software on purpose was a huge step forward.
• MrStonedOne 4y ago