Using unlocked phone for UMA

J

Jemma J

New member
Thyth is actually closest (to the others suggesting he check his wifi settings - he's talking about UMA here, not browsing). This is voice encapsulation over wifi (UMA/GAN).
Astroboy, you're a T-Mobile subscriber...so call them up and ask them to push the service books to you to enable UMA (or home calling zone, or whatever their customer service folks are calling it this week)
 
Thanks Tyth, I downloaded them, installed the "root" one, rebooted the device, then installed the "engineering" one. One more reboot and no change on the UMA front. They do show up now in my Certificates list, just with the strange yellow question marks:



Ridicule, I have contacted T-mo on this. They've been very cheery and helpful, but it's taken a while to get to the right place. I'm currently in line for a call back from the blackberry tech support people. Wait time was supposed to be 2 hours and 45 minutes 3 1/2 hours ago. Luckily this isn't an urgent undertaking. I will definitely lobby for sending UMA service books when I get to talk to someone who understands the situation.
Thanks to everyone for the help, I'll report my findings.
 
Finally heard from T-mobile. The fellow I spoke with in the "Blackberry UMA Department" told me that he was 100% certain that UMA with a non-T-mobile branded phone was impossible. According to him, and other sources there he described as "definitive", RIM makes the Wi-Fi antenna on the T-Mobile branded phones different than the other 8120s. They in fact are made with "algorithms" that are designed specially to work with T-Mobile hot-spot routers and only work with other routers as a "side benefit". This sounds like a load of crap to me, but hours of searching hasn't provided me with any evidence to the contrary. I doubt it's a specially "algorithm-ed" antenna, but maybe the service books look for a particular hardware ID or something...
 
Wow. Very interesting. Wonder if anyone has a non-T-mobile branded phone to try this with or has tried it. I am inclined to agree with you though that the algorithm line sounds fishy. Contact RIM to try and confirm this maybe?
 
hmmm here's an interesting question do the 8320 and 8820 ad 8120 operating systems load from one carrier to another....if so you might try and load a TMO official 4.2 or 4.3 whatever the latest is for your phone and see if it works, if so just upgrade and restore your data....
slight chance....
i suggest this because i lost my-favs and a few other tmo exclusives by going to 4.5 without doing a backup restore type upgrade
 
I'm using the latest T-Mo OS 4.3.0.115. It's only the second OS I've had on it after the CSL OS that it came with. Maybe it's worth trying a newer one and seeing what I get.
 
Not even I have a UMA option there on my T-Mobile 8320.

I took a look through my list of service books too, I can't seem to find anything related to UMA in there. Looking back at astro's screen shots, I notice that the WiFi diagnostics is missing the UMA there too. I should also mention that I'm not using a T-Mobile OS, so I don't think the functionality is in a specific provider OS. As far as I know, device specific firmware is really just a thin hypervisor type layer that provides a Java Virtual Machine, so I doubt UMA specificity is in there.

The hardware is, for all intents, and purposes identical. The wireless routers that T-Mobile sells have the WMM power saving modes enabled, which the phone can use to (drastically) decrease the power utilization while in WiFi, but the phone side wireless hardware should be identical.

If UMA behavior is not defined in service books, operating system version, the only two options are certs (which you installed) or the WiFi application in the OS might check for vendor ID.

I have one more idea as a long shot if some of my previous assumptions prove false:
Can you use javaloader to list the installed modules on your device and see if net_rim_cldc_gan_diagnostics and net_rim_cldc_impl_gan are present on your device? Generic Access Network/Unlicensed Mobile Access are the same tech.

In the event they are not, and if you're feeling particularly adventurous, you can try installing the modules with javaloader (after backing up!). It could be that the OS installation by the desktop manager checks vendor ID and excludes packages as needed, but javaloader will let you install it.

The more I think about it, the more likely I think that those modules might be missing from your device.
 
You don't need to use javaloader to see if the modules are present. If you go to options, advanced, applications, then hit the menu and select modules, it should list them there.
The code is virtually identical between carriers - the one gotcha is that carriers select to hide/disable features with their branding (this is held in the firmware - and can only be altered back at RIM).
(The caveat here is that there are sometimes carrier specific patches / tweaks in the OS / App's bundle they take for their devices). UMA is far beyond a patch/tweak. (and is available for all carriers if they choose).

So, the only toggle you see is in your mobile network settings? (where you select wifi-preferred?)
 
Indeed, no option to toggle/control UMA. If my device connects to a WiFi, it connects to UMA.

Either way, it would be good to see if those modules are absent on astro's device. If they are absent, providing UMA support for these unlocked devices should be as simple as installing all of the GAN/UMA modules via javaloader and making sure the certificates are in place.
 
I'm using a non-T-Mobile OS atm and still have the UMA section under Wi-Fi diagnostics. However, after looking through the service books, I can't find anything that references UMA. I do not have an option to toggle UMA either, that I can see. If I'm on Wi-Fi, and have enough of a signal, I go UMA, otherwise I get Wi-Fi, but running EDGE. Wish I could be of more help.
 
The selection for UMA (for voice) is actually in your mobile network settings - setting it to wifi-preferred will negotiate UMA when possible.

Those modules are present on any UMA-capable device (I suspect it's that some of the carrier branding disables these features - so DM doesn't load the modules).
 
I believe you need to download a tmobile blackberry os. Make sure you delete the vendor file before you install it to your phone

~via BB (wap.rabroad.com)~
 
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