Clank <clank75@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Roland Perry <roland@perry.uk> Wrote in message:
>>> As noted elsewhere, this was not a special feature of any particular Vodafone
>>> tariff, or indeed of Vodafone, or indeed of any UK network.
>> Actually, it was, because only Vodafone had that tariff
> Possibly
>
>> a the time, and to the best of our understanding, in the UK only their
>> phones on that tariff displayed the information to the great unwashed.
>
> Then your best understanding was pretty embarrassingly poor,
> wasn't it...
>
>>>> We spent some time showing this to Oftel staff in their office
>>> I suppose the fact that the UK government's regulator didn't have the faintest
>>> idea about the technology they were regulating shouldn't really come as any
>>> surprise...
>> What they were interested in was the possibility that phones other than
>> those on the Metrodigital tariff could be persuaded to display the
>> information to the great unwashed. We were using Orange phones.It's
>> called "consulting with industry"
>
> But wouldn't they have been more wise to employ consultants who
> actually understood what they were talking about?
>
> >and is far more efficient than going out to Dixons mystery
> shopping and then trying to reverse engineer what dozens of
> phones on multiple tariff are offering the public.
>> As you seem to be setting yourself up as an expert on such things,
>
> I think "setting yourself up as an expert" is an epithet that
> might reasonably reserved for 'consultants' who don't have the
> faintest idea of what they are consulting on and treat extremely
> basic and well understood functionality like an alien technology
> to be studied.
>
>> I have here a spare "Energy E12" candybar phone sent to me after Virgin
>> threw in the towel[1] when it came to unlocking one of my smartphones so
>> it would work continue to work after they switched MVMOs from EE (legacy
>> of T-Mobile) to Vodafone.What do I need to type in, to get it to display
>> these area codes?[1]
>
> Alas, enabling Cell Broadcast is not part of the standardised GSM
> MMI spec, so manufacturers are free to choose their own approach.
> But typically, it would be as described to you once already -
> either Messaging/Settings/Cell Broadcast/enable channel 50, or
> Settings/Messaging/Cell Broadcast/enable channel
> 50.
>
>
> I would be very surprised if any of the networks were still
> broadcasting anything on that channel, mind.
>

From memory Vodafone were the only network to broadcast area codes via cell
broadcast channel 50. You didn’t need to be on the Metrodigital tariff to
display them, just enable the appropriate setting in your phone. Presumably
handsets sold on this tariff had this setting pre enabled. The cell didn’t
just broadcast its own area code, but also adjacent ones (not sure what
happened in the likes of central London where there would be no adjacent
codes). Any call made to one of the displayed codes would be at a reduced
rate. I suppose the idea was to emulate the landline concept, where local
calls were at the time significantly cheaper. Rumour has it that Vodafone
have never turned this off, but since an iPhone can’t be persuaded to
display it I’ve no means of checking. I’ve also no understanding of how/if
cell broadcast has transitioned to 4/5G technology.

On 27/08/2022 10:58, Roland Perry wrote:
> Actually, it was, because only Vodafone had that tariff a the time, and
> to the best of our understanding, in the UK only their phones on that
> tariff displayed the information to the great unwashed.

It sounds similar to the 121 system which the firm used elsewhere. They
also adopted Orange but there were only a handful of base stations on
the West coast - put in quite early in GSM when they were hoping to get
the Scottish Ambulance contract.

We were loaned an Orange phone and as suspected the coverage was very poor.

In message <tecrnv$96oi$1@dont-email.me>, at 13:30:21 on Sat, 27 Aug
2022, Clank <clank75@googlemail.com> remarked:
>Roland Perry <roland@perry.uk> Wrote in message:
>>>As noted elsewhere, this was not a special feature of any particular Vodafone
>>>tariff, or indeed of Vodafone, or indeed of any UK network.
>>Actually, it was, because only Vodafone had that tariff
>Possibly
>
>> a the time, and to the best of our understanding, in the UK only
>>their phones on that tariff displayed the information to the great
>>unwashed.
>
>Then your best understanding was pretty embarrassingly poor,
> wasn't it...

OK, I'll bite. Which other phones displayed the code on their screen?

>>>> We spent some time showing this to Oftel staff in their office

>>>I suppose the fact that the UK government's regulator didn't have the
>>>faintest
>>>idea about the technology they were regulating shouldn't really come as any
>>>surprise...

>> What they were interested in was the possibility that phones other
>>than those on the Metrodigital tariff could be persuaded to display
>>the information to the great unwashed. We were using Orange
>>phones.It's called "consulting with industry"
>
>But wouldn't they have been more wise to employ consultants who
> actually understood what they were talking about?

My companion was a full time and very knowledgeable telecoms consultant,
and amongst other things I'd spent some time working as a consultant for
Vodafone. As well as employing said consultant to do things which I
wasn't up to speed myself on (and would have taken too much of my
management effort). Such as sourcing and rolling out 0845 service to an
ISP's customers.

But let's park that, until you come up with the other phones which
displayed the code.

> >and is far more efficient than going out to Dixons mystery

> shopping and then trying to reverse engineer what dozens of
> phones on multiple tariff are offering the public.

>> As you seem to be setting yourself up as an expert on such things,
>
>I think "setting yourself up as an expert" is an epithet that
> might reasonably reserved for 'consultants' who don't have the
> faintest idea of what they are consulting on and treat extremely
> basic and well understood functionality like an alien technology
> to be studied.

Well, let's see what your answer is to the challenge above. Should be
simple, if your claim is true.

>> I have here a spare "Energy E12" candybar phone sent to me after
>>Virgin threw in the towel[1] when it came to unlocking one of my
>>smartphones so it would work continue to work after they switched
>>MVMOs from EE (legacy of T-Mobile) to Vodafone.What do I need to type
>>in, to get it to display these area codes?[1]
>
>Alas, enabling Cell Broadcast is not part of the standardised GSM
> MMI spec, so manufacturers are free to choose their own approach.
> But typically, it would be as described to you once already -
> either Messaging/Settings/Cell Broadcast/enable channel 50, or
> Settings/Messaging/Cell Broadcast/enable channel
> 50.

Let me look at this...

It has "Message"... "Cell Broadcast"... CB Messages. Plus literally
<Empty List>

There's no option to turn on the display of my locality's area code on
the home screen.

Perhaps you can post a screen capture of a phone you have, which
does[1].

>I would be very surprised if any of the networks were still
> broadcasting anything on that channel, mind.

It's nothing whatsoever to do with broadcasting anything on that or any
other channel. It's showing the local landline dialling code on the home
screen, alongside the name of the network, the number of bars, and
whether you have any voicemail.

[1] eg: <https://www.mobilephonehistory.co.uk/orbitel/orbitel_902.php>

"The British-made Orbitel 902 told you which cell you were in. It
displayed a STD area code and the name of the cell."

But I can't find a photo of the screen.
--
Roland Perry

In message <tecupe$9hta$1@dont-email.me>, at 11:22:22 on Sat, 27 Aug
2022, Tweed <usenet.tweed@gmail.com> remarked:
>Clank <clank75@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Roland Perry <roland@perry.uk> Wrote in message:
>>>> As noted elsewhere, this was not a special feature of any
>>>>particular Vodafone
>>>> tariff, or indeed of Vodafone, or indeed of any UK network.
>>> Actually, it was, because only Vodafone had that tariff
>> Possibly
>>
>>> a the time, and to the best of our understanding, in the UK only their
>>> phones on that tariff displayed the information to the great unwashed.
>>
>> Then your best understanding was pretty embarrassingly poor,
>> wasn't it...
>>
>>>>> We spent some time showing this to Oftel staff in their office
>>>> I suppose the fact that the UK government's regulator didn't have
>>>>the faintest
>>>> idea about the technology they were regulating shouldn't really come as any
>>>> surprise...
>>> What they were interested in was the possibility that phones other than
>>> those on the Metrodigital tariff could be persuaded to display the
>>> information to the great unwashed. We were using Orange phones.It's
>>> called "consulting with industry"
>>
>> But wouldn't they have been more wise to employ consultants who
>> actually understood what they were talking about?
>>
>> >and is far more efficient than going out to Dixons mystery
>> shopping and then trying to reverse engineer what dozens of
>> phones on multiple tariff are offering the public.
>>> As you seem to be setting yourself up as an expert on such things,
>>
>> I think "setting yourself up as an expert" is an epithet that
>> might reasonably reserved for 'consultants' who don't have the
>> faintest idea of what they are consulting on and treat extremely
>> basic and well understood functionality like an alien technology
>> to be studied.
>>
>>> I have here a spare "Energy E12" candybar phone sent to me after Virgin
>>> threw in the towel[1] when it came to unlocking one of my smartphones so
>>> it would work continue to work after they switched MVMOs from EE (legacy
>>> of T-Mobile) to Vodafone.What do I need to type in, to get it to display
>>> these area codes?[1]
>>
>> Alas, enabling Cell Broadcast is not part of the standardised GSM
>> MMI spec, so manufacturers are free to choose their own approach.
>> But typically, it would be as described to you once already -
>> either Messaging/Settings/Cell Broadcast/enable channel 50, or
>> Settings/Messaging/Cell Broadcast/enable channel
>> 50.
>>
>> I would be very surprised if any of the networks were still
>> broadcasting anything on that channel, mind.
>
>From memory Vodafone were the only network to broadcast area codes via cell
>broadcast channel 50. You didn’t need to be on the Metrodigital tariff to
>display them, just enable the appropriate setting in your phone. Presumably
>handsets sold on this tariff had this setting pre enabled.

I'm with you on the latter, but not so much about how widespread it was
amongst handsets in general. Of course, in those days the majority of
handsets were bought from networks and were set up for you.

>The cell didn’t just broadcast its own area code, but also adjacent
>ones

That'll be a later version of the tariff, because they widened its reach
when the "only your local cell" didn't meet their commercial targets.

>(not sure what happened in the likes of central London where there
>would be no adjacent codes).

Given the way we saw codes for south-of-the-river in my original
anecdote, they must have been displaying the six (or whatever) digit
code. Even though landline calls would have been charged a local across
the whole of the London area. Maybe that's one reason why customers were
disappointed, especially if their cut-price mobile calls really were for
just the subscribers in that subset of London.

>Any call made to one of the displayed codes would be at a reduced
>rate. I suppose the idea was to emulate the landline concept, where local
>calls were at the time significantly cheaper.

It was to try to persuade people to use their mobile phone much more as
the default appliance, on the grounds that many of the calls people made
were allegedly to businesses and friends in their locality, rather than
spread all over the country. And giving them cheap calls to those, when
out and about in their local High Street, would condition them to using
the mobile anywhere (at far more lucrative rates for Vodafone).

[My own solution to this was to try to increase the range of my Rabbit
base station, so that it was a cordless phone all around the village,
rather than just at home; this was following on from when I had a
landline with a first generation cordless phone attached, on the 6th
floor of an infamous office block in Brentwood, and allowed me to be
contactable for a certain radius outside the premises as well as
wherever I was likely to be wandering].

>Rumour has it that Vodafone have never turned this off,

I suppose I'm going to have to ask my tame Vodafone engineer about that.

>but since an iPhone can’t be persuaded to display it I’ve no means
>of checking. I’ve also no understanding of how/if cell broadcast has
>transitioned to 4/5G technology.

--
Roland Perry

On Sat, 27 Aug 2022 15:51:07 +0300 (GMT+03:00), Clank
<clank75@googlemail.com> wrote:

>I've just realised that I've lived here for a decade and I
> couldn't tell you what Bucharest's area code is, or even if it
> has one...

SRR's phone number is +40 21 303 1777, so.... <g>

In message <ted3vu$a0dc$1@dont-email.me>, at 15:51:07 on Sat, 27 Aug
2022, Clank <clank75@googlemail.com> remarked:
>Tweed <usenet.tweed@gmail.com> Wrote in message:
>> From memory Vodafone were the only network to broadcast area codes via cell
>> broadcast channel 50.
>
>I can vouch with absolute 100% certainty that Cellnet did as well,
> at least for a time. And back in the day that covered all of the
> networks ;-). No idea if the later networks ever bothered,
> though - quite likely not.
>
>I have seen it used in other countries as well, albeit more often
> to just show area/cell names rather than area codes.
>
>
>I've just realised that I've lived here for a decade and I
> couldn't tell you what Bucharest's area code is, or even if it
> has one... The era where anyone had any expectation of phone
> numbers as anything other than a unique ID that you type in and
> forget (or add to your address book and forget) really is over, I
> think.
>
>> The cell didn?t just broadcast its own area code, but also adjacent
>>ones (not sure what happened in the likes of central London where
>>there would be no adjacent codes). Any call made to one of the
>>displayed codes would be at a reduced rate.
>
>It wasn't adjacent codes per se, it was the codes covered by that
> cell - remember in those days the average cell had a 25km radius
> and could cover many local areas. If they used Roland's idea of
> only showing the code of the exchange area the mast was in, there
> would be many subscribers in exchange areas that didn't also
> contain a mast that would never be able to use the
> tariff.

It isn't "my idea", it's what they launched the service as.

And you've just highlighted one of the reasons why it wasn't a roaring
success!

Of course if you nominated a home-cell, when your home or other places
you might want to be making calls from, had no coverage. Some might call
that a self-inflicted injury!

--
Roland Perry

In message <ted160$9nr7$2@dont-email.me>, at 13:03:11 on Sat, 27 Aug
2022, MB <MB@nospam.net> remarked:
>On 27/08/2022 10:58, Roland Perry wrote:

>> Actually, it was, because only Vodafone had that tariff a the time, and
>> to the best of our understanding, in the UK only their phones on that
>> tariff displayed the information to the great unwashed.
>
>It sounds similar to the 121 system which the firm used elsewhere.

Did 121 have a Metrodigital-clone tariff?

>They also adopted Orange but there were only a handful of base stations
>on the West coast - put in quite early in GSM when they were hoping to
>get the Scottish Ambulance contract.
>
>We were loaned an Orange phone and as suspected the coverage was very poor.

When I got my Orange phone (a few months before the launch, one of the
perks of being a part-time telecoms journalist) the coverage where I
lived was appalling by modern standards.

I think they had one mast which was located to cover a stretch of the
M40, and it was a case of trying to find anywhere at home that had a
glimmer.

One of the other things the Nokia Orange had, which later phones didn't,
was a flashing LED which changed colour depending on whether it was what
today we'd call in "no bars" territory.

However, one of the virues of SMS was that they'd be queued up and sent
as soon as it had that glimmer.

ObRail: soon after I spent some time doing trips from Westbury to the
Reading area (by train) as an alternative to driving. And with a bit of
luck you'd be able to exchange SMS with someone maybe once every half
hour as it dipped in and out of coverage. The same when driving from
Reading to London, with very patchy coverage outside the M25.
--
Roland Perry

Clank <clank75@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 26 Aug 2022 at 6:04:46 PM EEST, "Roland Perry" <roland@perry.uk> wrote:
>
>> In message <ojvkti-mr1.ln1@castle.rilynn.me.uk>, at 20:36:56 on Thu, 25
>> Aug 2022, Roger Lynn <usenet@rilynn.me.uk> remarked:
>>>>>>> I wasn't suggesting mobiles should have local numbers, I was simply suggesting
>>>>>>> that if I'm connected to a base station in London why TF do I have to put 020
>>>>>>> at the beginning of the number? Why can't it just accept the local number.
>>>>>>> What happens at the edges of london (or whatever area) you might ask, well
>>>>>>> people can always dial the full number if they're not sure where they are! :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So dialling the same number, from the same phone, would connect to different
>>>>>> subscribers depending on which cell it happened to be connected to at the
>>>>>> time?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> That sounds like a usability nightmare*.
>>>>>
>>>>> Why? If you're in Hyde Park its hardly going to be connecting to a base
>>>>> station in Sevenoaks is it?
>>>>
>>>> How do you know when you are between two base stations (either of
>>>> which you could be using from the same spot at different times) on
>>>> opposite sides of the border with 020-land (which does not match the
>>>> Greater London boundary) ?
>>>
>>> Many "feature" (dumb) phones showed (or could show) the current local
>>> area code on the home screen.
>>
>> This was an actual feature on phones subscribed to the Vodafone
>> Metrodigital tariff. They were trying to increase the adoption of mobile
>> phones by having a cheaper tariff for "local" calls.
>>
>> Literally, so if you went walkabout near where you lived, there wasn't a
>> chilling effect of eyewatering long distance prices for calling home (or
>> whatever).
>>
>> In fact, according to one mobile phone expert who was a friend of mine,
>> you could persuade most mobile phones (with perhaps some slightly hacked
>> firmware) to display the dialling code of the place the base station was
>> located.
>
> Good grief.
>
>
> As noted elsewhere, this was not a special feature of any particular Vodafone
> tariff, or indeed of Vodafone, or indeed of any UK network. It's the standard
> Cell Broadcast facility built into GSM since pretty much day 1. (And on the UK
> networks at least, at the times when this was a thing anybody actually knew
> existed, it showed all the dialling codes within the given base station area,
> not the code of the base station itself.)
>
> Any GSM phone of that vintage could display the messages, and indeed more or
> less any phone today (the only exception I'd hazard a guess at would be
> iPhone, where I suspect Apple has buried the functionality so deep as to be
> lost, being as it is not propietary.) On Android, you'll find the option in
> your SMS messaging app, under Settings, somewhere. On Samsung, it's
> "Settings", "More settings", "Broadcast channels"*. Once you're in that page,
> you can either enable it for all channels, or just add Channel 50 which is the
> channel used for cell identity broadcasts:
>
> <https://imgur.com/a/AVnrD7z>
>
>
> Now, whether or not in this day and age the networks are actually still
> broadcasting anything on Channel 50... Or indeed any channel (other than the
> emergency alerts), well, who knows - I wouldn't be surprised if they'd stopped
> long ago, but you can try it and see.

No sign of any such settings on my phone, just stuff about how to handle
emergency broadcasts. Fairphone 3, Android 11, EE MVNO.

Sam

--
The entity formerly known as Sam.Wilson@ed.ac.uk
Spit the dummy to reply

Clank <clank75@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Sam Wilson <ukr@dummy.wislons.fastmail.co.uk> Wrote in message:
>>> Now, whether or not in this day and age the networks are actually still
>>> broadcasting anything on Channel 50... Or indeed any channel (other than the
>>> emergency alerts), well, who knows - I wouldn't be surprised if they'd stopped
>>> long ago, but you can try it and see.
>> No sign of any such settings on my phone, just stuff about how to handle
>> emergency broadcasts. Fairphone 3, Android 11, EE MVNO.
>
> Have you checked Settings *in the Messages app* (not from the main
> phone settings)? It at least used to be there on stock Android.
> I suppose Google could have dropped it entirely though, given
> it's essentially unused these days.

That is in the [SMS] Messages app. I don’t know how far Fairphone might
have customised it, but as little as possible, I’d guess.

Sam

--
The entity formerly known as Sam.Wilson@ed.ac.uk
Spit the dummy to reply

In message <te52lc$3aa2h$1@dont-email.me>, at 11:39:25 on Wed, 24 Aug
2022, Anna Noyd-Dryver <anna@noyd-dryver.com> remarked:
>Roland Perry <roland@perry.uk> wrote:
>> In message <tdtqne$2d4cc$2@dont-email.me>, at 17:41:02 on Sun, 21 Aug
>> 2022, Anna Noyd-Dryver <anna@noyd-dryver.com> remarked:
>>> Roland Perry <roland@perry.uk> wrote:
>>>> In message <tdr3fj$20s5j$4@dont-email.me>, at 16:52:03 on Sat, 20 Aug
>>>> 2022, Anna Noyd-Dryver <anna@noyd-dryver.com> remarked:
>>>>
>>>>>> And the train crew trying to round up the pax (who, with hindsight may
>>>>>> not have been correctly allowed off the train) the majority of whom it's
>>>>>> said refused to budge and decided to stay at the closed station at their
>>>>>> own risk).
>>>>>
>>>>> Do you have a cite for that "it is said"?
>>>>>
>>>>> (As opposed to 'well the train left without them so that must be what
>>>>> happened')
>>>>
>>>> That's all over social media. Unreliably as is all crowd-sourced data.
>>>> But the train stayed there long enough for every passenger to have been
>>>> asked individually what they wanted to do.
>>>
>>> Just one link to one tweet of someone actually saying "we were asked and
>>> given the option to travel to Penrith for a taxi, or waiting here until the
>>> gate was opened, before the train left"? Then I can bookmark it and save it
>>> for when I need to quote it…
>>
>> It was reported that 30 pax were involved, and the train was stopped
>> long enough to have a discussion with them all. Someone mentioned the
>> driver, and I queried that on the grounds I thought the TM was more
>> likely.
>
>Link? (I would genuinely find it useful and interesting to have one)

You can probably find a specialist realtime train site that confirms how
long the train was stopped, but by the time I posted the above it had
churned off RTT.

As for the quote about the driver, once again lost in the haystack which
is old Twitter traffic (I did try looking). The driver was said to be
"she", and while I know there are some female drivers, I don't know how
many Avanti have on such routes, and it's probably another nudge that TM
is more likely.
--
Roland Perry

In message <tejhf6$18v7f$1@dont-email.me>, at 00:17:57 on Tue, 30 Aug
2022, Clank <clank75@googlemail.com> remarked:
>Clank <clank75@googlemail.com> Wrote in message:
>> Sam Wilson <ukr@dummy.wislons.fastmail.co.uk> Wrote in message:
>>> No sign of any such settings on my phone, just stuff about how to handle
>>> emergency broadcasts. Fairphone 3, Android 11, EE MVNO.
>> Have you checked Settings *in the Messages app* (not from the main
>>phone settings)? It at least used to be there on stock Android. I
>>suppose Google could have dropped it entirely though, given it's
>>essentially unused these days.
>> That said, I've just landed in the UK and so far - as predicted - I
>>see no evidence that either EE/Orange or Vodafone are still
>>broadcasting anything. I don't have a SIM for any of the other
>>networks, although I suppose I could try and force my Romanian SIM to
>>roam onto them...
>
>Still, the handy thing about being back in the UK is that one
> drawer in my house in London is a veritable museum of ancient
> mobile phones. Unfortunately the museum of compatible chargers
> is held somewhere else, but nevertheless I managed to get a
> couple of them to turn on - an old Moto RAZR, and an old
> Sony-Ericsson.
>
>Pictures of the Cell Broadcast configurations - including the
> option to show channel 50 on the home screen - are
> here...
>
>https://imgur.com/a/H4mL6ab
>
>(Note explanatory captions also.)

What we badly need is a screen shot of some phones with the code on the
home screen. Old screen shots probably.

>...thus demonstrating as if it were needed that no, Vodafone did
> not invent some magic alien technology,

The "technology" in this case was to display the code so you could see
it at a glance on the screen, as a default. [So that you knew if the
call you were making was within the Metrodigital cheaper tariff].

I'm fairly sure you are still at cross-purposes.

--
Roland Perry

In message <tede5j$arfl$1@dont-email.me>, at 18:44:49 on Sat, 27 Aug
2022, Clank <clank75@googlemail.com> remarked:
>Roland Perry <roland@perry.uk> Wrote in message:
>>>Then your best understanding was pretty embarrassingly poor,
>>> wasn't it..
>> OK, I'll bite. Which other phones displayed the code on their screen?
>
>(Facepalm). Any where the user cared to turn on Cell Broadcast
> channel 50 messages.
>
>That Vodafone turned this on by default for phones sold on certain
> tariffs does not make this a special feature.

It made it special as far as the customer was concerned.

>Are you really stupid enough to believe that Vodafone had a custom
>extension to GSM developed, and convinced manufacturers to deploy a
>custom firmware, just for them, to implement this for one tariff?

erm no. Mainly because having worked on projects with them, and knowing
their design engineers, such a thing would be way outside the scope of
agreeing to do that simply o implement a marketing person's bright idea.

....

>> There's no option to turn on the display of my locality's area code on
>> the home screen.
>
>Are you really this thick?
>
>Cell. Phones. Of. That. Vintage. Show. Channel. 50. Messages. On.
> The. Home. Screen.

Perhaps they did, although I don't recall ever seeing one.

>That, for a brief period in history, UK networks used this feature
> to show the local area code on the home screen of their
> subscribers' phones really shouldn't be confusing to
> you.

Networks, plural? On all tariffs, plural?

If it had been possible to configure this easily on my phone (rather
than the phone my companion had borrowed from the network's lab) I can
assure you I would have done it in a heartbeat. Just like for years I
was the only person I knew who jumped through the hoops to have a custom
wallpaper on my 2001 vintage phone, and later my own custom ringtone
(rather than one of the pre-pack ones from the manufacturer or $5
downloads).

>> Perhaps you can post a screen capture of a phone you have, which does
>
>Roland, as ever you are talking about 30 year old technology, that
> depends on data that modern networks don't broadcast, and which
> networks in most countries *never* broadcast. I'm not in a
> position to travel either back in time or indeed to the UK to
> take a photo of an ancient phone on a legacy network.

Indeed, but such photos exist in the archives, maybe. Perhaps we need a
Metrodigital sales brochure.
--
Roland Perry

I can't remember where I was but I remember someone once bringing up the
engineering screens on their phone.

We worked on a MPT1327 network and had what we called the Batphone (big
Nokia "handbag" style phone) which would display all sorts of information.

In message <tel4aq$1fvn6$1@dont-email.me>, at 14:46:02 on Tue, 30 Aug
2022, MB <MB@nospam.net> remarked:
>I can't remember where I was but I remember someone once bringing up
>the engineering screens on their phone.
>
>We worked on a MPT1327 network and had what we called the Batphone (big
>Nokia "handbag" style phone) which would display all sorts of
>information.

There's an app on my phone which displays all kinds of information about
the network, including for example:

MCC, MNC, TAC, ECI, PCI, eNB, LCID, NID, RSRP, ASU, RSRQ, RSSNR, TA

But none of those leap out at me as either the Cell Broadcast Channel or
local Area Code.
--
Roland Perry

On 31 Aug 2022 at 10:14:43 AM GMT+1, "Roland Perry" <roland@perry.uk> wrote:

> In message <tel4aq$1fvn6$1@dont-email.me>, at 14:46:02 on Tue, 30 Aug
> 2022, MB <MB@nospam.net> remarked:
>> I can't remember where I was but I remember someone once bringing up
>> the engineering screens on their phone.
>>
>> We worked on a MPT1327 network and had what we called the Batphone (big
>> Nokia "handbag" style phone) which would display all sorts of
>> information.
>
> There's an app on my phone which displays all kinds of information about
> the network, including for example:
>
> MCC, MNC, TAC, ECI, PCI, eNB, LCID, NID, RSRP, ASU, RSRQ, RSSNR, TA
>
> But none of those leap out at me as either the Cell Broadcast Channel or
> local Area Code.

Let's try explaining again to our self-styled technology expert using really
simple words:

Cell Broadcast data is not an attribute of the cell. Cell Broadcast messages
are effectively SMSs that instead of having an individual subscriber address
have a broadcast channel number instead. All handsets receive those messages
and then choose to do something with them - typically, ignore them, unless the
handset is subscribed to a particular channel number.

Certain cell broadcast channel numbers - to wit, 50 - have traditionally been
treated as 'special', being de facto used as the "Cell Info" channel.
Handsets traditionally displayed messages received on this channel on the home
screen rather than in a message folder. (However this was custom rather than
mandate, and modern smartphones do not as far as I know bother.)

Historically, some networks - including Vodafone UK - have used Cell Broadcast
channel 50 to broadcast the local area dialling code. Other networks sent the
locality name. Most networks broadcast nothing at all.

Nowadays, it's highly likely that nobody broadcasts anything on CB50, because
(a) it's irrelevant information in the modern world, and (b) the data sent for
channel 50 is part of the base station configuration, and it is a pointless
hassle to configure it correctly with the vastly larger number of (much
smaller) cells in modern networks.

The main thing CB is used for in the modern world is emergency broadcast
notifications (e.g. CB channel 4352 = earthquake warnings, 4353 = Tsunami,
4354 = Earthquake + Tsunami, 4356 = other emergencies, 4370 = CMAS (the modern
alerting standard) Presedential alert, 4371 = CMAS Extreme Alert, 4372 = CMAS
Severe alert, etc. etc. etc. etc.))

CB messages can also be used to broadcast SIM data updates (channels 4096 to
4351), but now we're into the weeds.

The fact that CB50 is not nowadays used by anyone does not change the *FACT*
that this is how Vodafone used to transmit local area codes to be displayed on
the home screens of customers on their Metro Digital tariff. (The SIM can
configure a phone to enable certain channels by default.)

It is also a fact that any GSM compatible phone of the era could also display
the same information simply by enabling the relevant Cell Broadcast channel
reception in their phone's settings.

The other relevant *fact* that has arisen in this discussion - that you,
Roland Perry, did not understand this at the time and yet felt qualified to
charge people consultancy fees for your wisdom - does not change any of the
other facts, it merely demonstrates that you, Roland Perry, are an absolute
fraud. As with TV programmes that seem plausible right up until they broadcast
something on a subject which one is familiar with and the realisation dawns
that it is full of factual errors and inaccuracy, whenever you opine on a
subject which someone else is more qualified to comment on you are shown to be
a bloviator who believes confidently asserted bullshit somehow trumps
documented reality.

People like you - and the debased establishment that thinks a nice suit and a
certificate from Cambridge is evidence of competence - are the reason the UK
technology industry never progressed beyong taking microcontroller reference
designs from chip manufacturers and cobbling them together with the cheapest
components possible to produce wretched computers that consumers rightly
rejected as soon as they could get their hands on quality products from
elsewhere. You are, with the very greatest of respect, a parody of a man and a
walking exemplar of the failure of post-Industrial Britain.