I think Ofcom have now ruled in the UK that data is data so if you're
allowed X GB to use on your phone you must legally also be allowed to
use any or all of it for tethering.
Nice.
They probably gave things like 50 GB assuming that most people would not
use them, whereas people that connect a computer or two will use the data.
Is it possible to _manually_ switch towers w/o changing your location?
Question 2:
How do they even know that you're hotspotting/tethering to a given tower?
Just to be clear on how the 5GB/month/tower tethering/hotspotting limitation works in the USA on a typical post-paid T-Mobile plan...
Per tower? to us in europe that seems an odd limitation, we pay per
device and can use the specified amount of data anywhere in the country
(or when roaming, if appropriate).
The conversation below is what sparked these two related questions:
*How much does unlimited everything typically cost in Europe & in the UK?*
<https://groups.google.com/g/comp.mobile.android/c/8fhfuD-NhF8/m/SsEQkLqQAAAJ>
Question 1:
Is it possible to _manually_ switch towers w/o changing your location?
Question 2:
How do they even know that you're hotspotting/tethering to a given tower?
Almost always we find a way around every arbitrarily imposed restriction.
===< here is the conversation that sparked those two questions >===
"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote
>> I think Ofcom have now ruled in the UK that data is data so if you're
>> allowed X GB to use on your phone you must legally also be allowed to
>> use any or all of it for tethering.
>
> Nice.
>
> They probably gave things like 50 GB assuming that most people would not
> use them, whereas people that connect a computer or two will use the data.
Just to be clear on how the 5GB/month/tower tethering/hotspotting limitation works in the USA on a typical post-paid T-Mobile plan...
Here's my understanding based on experience & T-Mobile's explanations
1. The 5GB/month is per tower and that's high-speed tethering/hotspotting
2. If you move to another tower, that 5GB/month/line is still available
3. After that, T-Mobile _never_ shuts data down - but it slows down
4. T-Mobile sends a text at 80% (my grandkids get warned all the time)
5. For a one-time $10 (I believe) you can add another 50GB per month
6. Which, like all T-Mobile plans, you can cancel the next day if you like
What I'd like to know is how they know you're tethering/hotspotting?
Also if it's possible to _manually_ switch towers w/o changing location
On 16/12/2023 15:59, Andy Burns wrote:
Per tower? to us in europe that seems an odd limitation, we pay per
device and can use the specified amount of data anywhere in the
country (or when roaming, if appropriate).
I imagine that rule is to avoid people using the mobile network for a
high volume fixed connection, for which they should have their own fibre.
Andy Burns wrote:
Per tower? to us in europe that seems an odd limitation, we pay per
device and can use the specified amount of data anywhere in the
country (or when roaming, if appropriate).
I imagine that rule is to avoid people using the mobile network for a
high volume fixed connection, for which they should have their own fibre.
On 16/12/2023 15:59, Andy Burns wrote:
Per tower? to us in europe that seems an odd limitation, we pay per
device and can use the specified amount of data anywhere in the country
(or when roaming, if appropriate).
I imagine that rule is to avoid people using the mobile network for a
high volume fixed connection, for which they should have their own
fibre.
On 16/12/2023 15:59, Andy Burns wrote:
Per tower? to us in europe that seems an odd limitation, we pay per
device and can use the specified amount of data anywhere in the country
(or when roaming, if appropriate).
I imagine that rule is to avoid people using the mobile network for a
high volume fixed connection, for which they should have their own fibre.
Why? Mobile data is more expensive so the internet provider will be more
than happy to be charging for it. They would rather you didn't go to fibre.
Just to be clear on how the 5GB/month/tower tethering/hotspotting
limitation works in the USA on a typical post-paid T-Mobile plan...
Per tower? to us in europe that seems an odd limitation, we pay per
device and can use the specified amount of data anywhere in the country
(or when roaming, if appropriate).
Tethering, in the conversation you quote below, doesn't refer to be
using a given tower. Tethering is simply connecting a computer to a
mobile phone, so that the phone provides internet.
Andy Burns wrote:
Per tower? to us in europe that seems an odd limitation
Per tower limits always are going to be better than per device limits are.
Think about the math when more than one tower in your location ends up
giving you as many five gigabytes as towers your device can connect to.
Peter wrote:
Andy Burns wrote:
Per tower? to us in europe that seems an odd limitation
Per tower limits always are going to be better than per device limits are. >>
Think about the math when more than one tower in your location ends up
giving you as many five gigabytes as towers your device can connect to.
It would hardly ever benefit me ...
My phone gets 20GB/month allowance and rarely uses half of that which
will be spread across numerous towers while I'm away from home and my >broadband/wifi.
For the last few months I've had a mifi with unlimited data purely
because of one location I visit that has almost zero coverage on my
phone's network, so all that data is a single tower and is over
5GB/month. In fact my phone uses wifi calling over the mifi when I'm
there, so I then get good phone coverage and good access from the laptop.
Andy Burns wrote:
For the last few months I've had a mifi with unlimited data purely
because of one location I visit that has almost zero coverage on my
phone's network
So the mifi is using a different cellular carrier than your phone is???
Is that why it works?
Is it possible to _manually_ switch towers w/o changing your location?
i'd have thought the only factor in your control is to change what
band(s) your phone is using, but since it will chose the fastest when
left to itself, you will most likely be slowing your connection down by forcing it e.g. from 5G to 4G/3G, and may end up on the same tower anyway.
Pointless as users have no control over which tower they control to. I have never heard of such an idiotic system.
Would also be a nightmare for the network to manage.
Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> wrote
Pointless as users have no control over which tower they control to. I have >> never heard of such an idiotic system.
Would also be a nightmare for the network to manage.
Just to be clear, Chris, we're talking also to Android users, not only iOS users, where on Android, I've almost never failed to do whatever I want to.
So I'm pretty sure you _can_ control the tower you connect to, Chris.
<https://i.postimg.cc/BQMVhnGt/5gvslte01.jpg> LTE is currently selected
Andy Burns (who knows more than I do about it) already reflected on one way but I'm also aware of other potential methods (some of which I've tried).
<https://i.postimg.cc/FFByv7Ps/bands01.jpg> Hidden Network-Mode Activity
<https://i.postimg.cc/ZKnwPGQ0/bands02.jpg> Hidden Band-Selection Activity
<https://i.postimg.cc/L5CZHt2k/bands03.jpg> Band selection options
In summary, rest assured, on Android & on Linux you can do almost anything you want to (we just need to learn the best methods to choose the tower).
It would be very convenient to arbitrarily choose towers given we already know at any given time all neighboring towers and the bands they support.
<https://i.postimg.cc/N0fx62rz/speedtest18.jpg> Neighboring cells & bands
Wally J <walterjones@invalid.nospam> wrote:
Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> wrote
Pointless as users have no control over which tower they control to. I have >>> never heard of such an idiotic system.
Would also be a nightmare for the network to manage.
Just to be clear, Chris, we're talking also to Android users, not only iOS >> users, where on Android, I've almost never failed to do whatever I want to. >>
So I'm pretty sure you _can_ control the tower you connect to, Chris.
I doubt it very much. It defeats the whole purpose of a cellular network.
<https://i.postimg.cc/BQMVhnGt/5gvslte01.jpg> LTE is currently selected
LTE is not a tower.
Post a video capture of you manually hopping between
towers.
Andy Burns (who knows more than I do about it) already reflected on one way >> but I'm also aware of other potential methods (some of which I've tried).
<https://i.postimg.cc/FFByv7Ps/bands01.jpg> Hidden Network-Mode Activity
<https://i.postimg.cc/ZKnwPGQ0/bands02.jpg> Hidden Band-Selection Activity >> <https://i.postimg.cc/L5CZHt2k/bands03.jpg> Band selection options
Again, bands not towers. You'll know full well that each individual tower >will have many bands so you can use bands as a proxy for towers.
You've yet to also demonstrate you being to get 5GB of data per tower. Show
a screenshot of your billing broken down by tower.
In summary, rest assured, on Android & on Linux you can do almost anything >> you want to
Not denying that. A lot of times these efforts also break other >functionality. Or are so tortuous to do that it is not worthwhile beyond >academic interest.
The aim of the network will be to use the capacity of the towers most effectively to handle the current traffic. If users can selfishly
optimise the choice of tower, it will mean the network, as a whole, will
not work as a well.
How clever they are at doing that may vary, but they have a picture of
all the users and all the towers they can see, not just the towers one
user can see.
David Woolley <david@ex.djwhome.demon.invalid> wrote
The aim of the network will be to use the capacity of the towers most
effectively to handle the current traffic. If users can selfishly
optimise the choice of tower, it will mean the network, as a whole, will
not work as a well.
Thanks for your help and advice as this task seems easy to do at this point (although every neighboring-tower situation will present its own issues).
Luckily, my aim is EXACTLY the same, to optimize my phone's capacity,
where at this point the question is only asking HOW it can be done to
choose your own tower in order to gain the additional 5GB/line/month/tower
so it's a valid and similar pursuit.
How clever they are at doing that may vary, but they have a picture of
all the users and all the towers they can see, not just the towers one
user can see.
Luckily, I can see EXACTLY what they see with respect to my phone, which means I can see every sector antenna (called "neighboring cells") &
frequency - so I too can be "clever at doing it" - which is why I asked.
In summary, I think it can easily be done to manually switch towers, but of course I haven't tried it yet - but I agree with Andy Burns that frequency changes should do the trick (where the potential loss in speed is offset by the purposeful gain in overcoming "per-congested-tower" data limitations).
So far, theoretically attacking this problem set, the solution is...
1. You survey the local towers (trivial) and see all neighboring cells
2. You set your phone bands (trivial) to the bands of specific cells
Of course, the "realistic" part that will depend purely on the data is that maybe the next-nearest sector antenna uses the _same_ bands.
Only the real data knows for sure.
You've yet to also demonstrate you being to get 5GB of data per tower. Show >>a screenshot of your billing broken down by tower.
Indeed; there are four mobile operators in the UK, with quite a lot of
mast sharing between them, and numerous MVNOs piggy-backing on the four.
Only one operator gives good coverage at my late parents' house and
that's not my phone's operator, and I can't roam.
i'd have thought the only factor in your control is to change what
band(s) your phone is using, but since it will chose the fastest when
left to itself, you will most likely be slowing your connection down by forcing it e.g. from 5G to 4G/3G, and may end up on the same tower anyway.
<https://www.cellmapper.net/>
So I'm pretty sure you _can_ control the tower you connect to, Chris.
I doubt it very much. It defeats the whole purpose of a cellular network.
Post a video capture of you manually hopping between towers.
Again, bands not towers. You'll know full well that each individual tower will have many bands so you can use bands as a proxy for towers.
You've yet to also demonstrate you being to get 5GB of data per tower.
Show a screenshot of your billing broken down by tower.
In summary, rest assured, on Android & on Linux you can do almost anything >> you want to
Not denying that. A lot of times these efforts also break other functionality. Or are so tortuous to do that it is not worthwhile beyond academic interest.
For the last few months I've had a mifi with unlimited data purely
because of one location I visit that has almost zero coverage on my
phone's network, so all that data is a single tower and is over
5GB/month. In fact my phone uses wifi calling over the mifi when I'm
there, so I then get good phone coverage and good access from the laptop.
Again, bands not towers. You'll know full well that each individual tower will have many bands so you can use bands as a proxy for towers.
You've yet to also demonstrate you being to get 5GB of data per tower.
Show a screenshot of your billing broken down by tower.
In summary, rest assured, on Android & on Linux you can do almost anything >> you want to
Not denying that. A lot of times these efforts also break other functionality. Or are so tortuous to do that it is not worthwhile beyond academic interest.
Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> wrote
Again, bands not towers. You'll know full well that each individual tower
will have many bands so you can use bands as a proxy for towers.
Hi Chris,
I welcome any useful input as it's only an "idea" at the moment, mainly
Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> wrote
So I'm pretty sure you _can_ control the tower you connect to, Chris.
I doubt it very much. It defeats the whole purpose of a cellular network.
Hi Chris,
I realize your iPhone is crippled, but on Android we can see nearby towers.
<https://i.postimg.cc/4xgmTTgm/wifi01.jpg> graphical radio debuggers
<https://i.postimg.cc/Hn05bQwG/wifi02.jpg> Cellular-Z by Jersey Ho
<https://i.postimg.cc/fLC4zcm6/wifi04.jpg> Many signal strength apps
And on Android, it's literally trivial to set the bands we wish to use.
<https://i.postimg.cc/FFByv7Ps/bands01.jpg> Hidden Network-Mode Activity
Which is not setting which tower to which you connect.
So far, theoretically attacking this problem set, the solution is...
1. You survey the local towers (trivial) and see all neighboring cells
2. You set your phone bands (trivial) to the bands of specific cells
You literally (and quite obviously) have no clue about any of this.
In trying to understand everything you said, first I had to look up what >"mi-fi" means, where T-Mobile says this about the registered trademark:
"Q: What is the difference between hotspot and Mi-Fi?
A: MiFi is a registered trademark that many people use to refer
to a hotspot device. Both MiFi devices and hotspot devices
allow you to connect to the internet on the go by creating
a secure wireless network for you, your family, or friends."
<https://www.t-mobile.com/devices/iot/hotspots>
A mifi was a /private/ LAN. The same device in the
home tends now to be called a 'wireless router' in the UK I think.
"Hotspot" apparantly came from T-mobile. From wikipedia:
What we want though is a more direct way, e.g., blacklisting PCI or CellID.
Ah, so despite your assertion that it's possible you've not been able to do it yet.
Suffice to say that there are plenty of T-Mobile USA plans that limit the
amount of hotspotting you can do, and, in fact, they likely limit it on
purpose because they also want to sell you a mifi device for home Internet.
I see the confusion now.
You think hotspotting is the same as choosing a tower. It isn't.
Any hotspotting limits are artificial and set by the provider.
We used to have that in the UK, but no longer. They were futile and easily circumvented by fiddling with TTL settings on the device using the hotspot
AP somehow.
It was also commercially dumb as they were limiting their ability to charge for data access.
If you look at T-Mobile's plans on public resources, you'd see all sorts of >> prices and limitations on hotspotting for both tablets and for cellphones. >> <https://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/affordable-data-plans/hotspots>
Correct. An artificial limitation. A hotspot/mifi can easily be used as
your default source of internet at home.
Well, I have never approached even 1GB of hotspot/tethering data myself.
I've often used >1GB a day when hotspotting. Usually when doing video calls away from work or home. Despite using a "crippled" iphone. lol.
I have lots of mobile data included in 30-day rolling contract so it's
often easier to use mobile data rather than any "free" wifi.
But it's a worthwhile endeavor to be able to choose the tower at will.
Only for the most idle of minds.
Using <news:um0cfn$ud88$1@dont-email.me>, Alan wrote:
Which is not setting which tower to which you connect.
Not sure how it works on ios but the free llamalab "automate" app can tell android to use any desired cell tower which does what the op is asking for. https://llamalab.com/automate/
Cell tower pick
A decision block that lets the user choose nearby cellular towers. https://llamalab.com/automate/doc/block/cell_site_pick.html
The fiber will pause until the user has chosen one or more cell towers, cancelled the dialog or the timeout expired.
The initial cell towers input argument can be a single cell, a text of
comma separated cells, an array of single cells or a dictionary where each key is a single cell.
Cell format
A cell is text that begins with a network type followed by one or more optional hexdecimal properties separated by colon:
Network Properties Example
CDMA SID:NID:BID cdma:43ad:5f3:2da
GSM LAC:RNC:CID gsm:ca::427
LTE TAC:CI:PCI lte:ca:ca:427
WCDMA LAC:CID wcdma:54ae:3d57
UMTS PSC umts:503
TD-SCDMA LAC:CID tdscdma:54ae:3d57
NR NCI nr:3d743a23d
Input arguments
Initial cell towers - initially shown and selected cells, even if not
nearby, default is none.
Subscription id - id of subscription (SIM) to scan for cells, default is
the system default subscription. (Android 10+)
Timeout - time until the notification/dialog is automatically canceled, default is no timeout.
Notification channel - UUID of notification channel used for shown notification, default is the flow default or Flow.
Show window - whether to show the dialog window directly without having to tap the notification. Requires the "appear atop of other apps or parts of
the screen" privilege on Android 10+.
Output variables
Picked cell towers - variable to assign an array of picked cells.
Updated on Nov 16, 2023 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.llamalab.automate
Alan wrote on Tue, 19 Dec 2023 09:37:30 -0800 :
So far, theoretically attacking this problem set, the solution is...
1. You survey the local towers (trivial) and see all neighboring cells
2. You set your phone bands (trivial) to the bands of specific cells
You literally (and quite obviously) have no clue about any of this.
Why haven't you offered any advice if you know so much about how to do it?
Anyways, there is this Dec 30, 2020 video on cell tower & channel locking. https://youtu.be/BGCq2BrACSg
The video shows the guy connected to one tower, and then connecting to two other towers in sequence just by locking his channel to their ARFCN & PCI.
For each of the towers, he then tests his download speeds so that he can choose to manually connect to the fastest tower of those his phone can see.
He first uses a free app called Net Monitor Lite to determine the ARFCN &
PCI of nearby cellular towers which are available for him to connect to.
Then they enter EngineerMode with ""#*3646633#*#*" which can be saved for reuse in autodialing (eg set the phone to autodial when a key is pressed).
In EngineerMode they click on Channel Lock, they select SIM 1 of two SIMs, they click Enable Lock, and they enter an available ARFCN & PCI identifier.
The JRD Engineering Mode access code can be different for each smartphone. https://utilitiesone.com/jrd-engineering-mode-what-it-is-and-how-it-can-enhance-your-smartphone-experience
Samsung uses a different USSD code "*#0011#" to enter Service Mode instead. https://www.infobae.com/en/2022/03/24/android-what-is-engineer-mode-and-what-are-its-benefits/
What I do is I keep a separate dialer for such things, so that it doesn't
get in the way of my default dialer. Once you get into Samsung Service Mode you press the three dots (top right) and select Key Input to enter "Q0".
You can also use com.samsung.android.dialer to save as a speedial their advanced ServiceMode using "*#2683662#" but it's easier to use an app. https://play.google.com/store/search?q=mtk%20engineering%20mode&c=apps
Here are the first 3 free apps that come out of that google play search. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Go.EngModeMtkShortcut https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mtkeng.anubhavraj.mtkengineermode
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.princewellinc.supermtkengineering
There's probably something similar for the iphone owners on this thread.
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