Data connection abroad not possible with VollaPhone

Stefano

@Tellina on my old Meizu Pro 5 sometimes this happens while I switch on Data roaming on. It won't work unless I reboot the phone. Also when in area with a weak signal thus can happen and it only gets to Edge or max to 3g. So it might be not specific to Volla phone.

A Former User

@stanwood
Hi,
many thanks for your reply and explainations.

Ok this is the principle. I assume that the step "the user profile is loaded into a data base of carrier 2 called VLR (Visitor Location Register)" has been processed successfully. Because I received 2 SMS. One with Covid-19 information from Switzerland and one from my German provider about the costs of calls abroad.
But "the name of operator 2 (which would be Swisscom in my case) is written next to the network bar and a small triangle" I can not confirm. Just noticed the name of operator 2 only after I made several reboots.
I will check this tomorrow, because I will be next to France.

My general observation is, that the registration process with the provider by using a VollaPhone is quite fishy, in general I´m not able to switch on the phone, enter the sim pin, unlock the phone and place a call. In nearly 100% of the cases the registration process is failing. (I described this already in another thread and put it to the VollaPhone issue list a week ago).

Let you know when I get feedback or have more insights.
Thanks

A Former User

@Stefano Thank you, it is good to have the feeling not to be alone. In my cases I figured out that I can revitalize the function to register successfully with my provider only if I start the phone without entering the sim pin, activate a WiFi connection and then register the sim. Next time I will try this also when I´m abroad.
Unfortunately I can´t even relay on this workaround.
Cheers

stanwood

@Tellina Ok, Triangle and network strength bar is a positive sign, meaning your'e well connected on the foreigner network. In my case, I traveled from my home country (Switzerland - using Salt as home carrier) to Italy a few weeks ago. I've got however the name of the used carrier (Iliad) displayed on my Nexus 5. As I used only the wifi connection I have no idea if cellular data worked as well.
Now, about Volla phone, I assume that porting is still under development (WIP), meaning that not all features are yet working as well as some bugs may appear.

A Former User

@stanwood Hello, thank you very much for your response.
Today I had the chance to verify the behaviour between Germany and France. This are the results:

I received the price information from my national provider about the cost of using the phone abroad. The target region was correctly identified (EU, country group 1, which means in my case no cost for calls, sms and data).
I could not send a SMS (so I assume I would also not be able to place a call).
The small triangle was displayed at the top of the screen.
My national provider (not the one from France) was mentioned as provider next to the triangle.

I will add this to the issue list of VollaPhone.

stanwood

@Tellina Indeed this is an abnormal issue.

Other troubleshooting elements would be as follow:

. Your price-plan includes a roaming limitation or a billing issue (ex. prepaid o.- balance)
. Your Sim card is not up to date.
. Check you have 3G + 4G enabled
. Check cellular data from abroad are activated
. Try to manually register to another carrier
. Try another German Sim card into your Vollaphone from abroad
. Check that your operator's SMS-C number is in international format (+49....)

If those steps remain unsuccessful I strongly recommend to ask the question on Volla Telegram group / or reactivate your query. https://t.me/hello_volla
BTW this issue is NOT mentioned here: https://github.com/HelloVolla/ubuntu-touch-beta-tests/wiki/High-level-epic-overview-for-Ubuntu-Touch-port

A Former User

@stanwood Hoi,
many thanks.

. Your price-plan includes a roaming limitation or a billing issue (ex. prepaid o.- balance): Nope, no limits for roaming & still money on the pre-paid account.
. Your Sim card is not up to date: Well, are 6 weeks too old?
. Check you have 3G + 4G enabled: Usually I have 3G (4G does not work with Volla atm).
. Check cellular data from abroad are activated: Yep, did this.
. Try to manually register to another carrier: Have not tried this, thanks for this hint.
. Try another German Sim card into your Vollaphone from abroad. Will be difficult, but I will give it a try.
. Check that your operator's SMS-C number is in international format (+49....): No clue where to check.

Usually I add issues here: https://github.com/HelloVolla/ubuntu-touch-beta-tests/issues
And since today I see that "my" older issues are recognized or already accepted as bug.
Of course not this topic, yet.

stanwood

@Tellina Ok, I guess you're a Volla phone Beta tester (I ordered mine and expect to receive it on next November). So it's good that you have submit this issue on the related github website.

It's thus almost certain that the problem does not come from a wrong band frequency nor a hardware issue. A further test you can do is to deactivate wifi, manually change to a wrong time / date, set to "automatic date & time" again, reboot phone and check if your clock is automatically updated (which would prove that the registration and access to the network is correct as well as the data communication with your device.) Also try to completely close all your apps and clear cache from those which require data connection + reboot device. But, I assume that those problems are not mostly relative to the international roaming itself.

I don't want to get off-topic neither, but from which way do you receive system updates? (directly from Volla, or normal UT OTA updates?)

A Former User

@stanwood Hello,
I´m updating via OTA (channel: development, at the time of writing 2020-09-12/2) usually on daily basis.

Changing the time settings brought some insights.
When power off the phone yesterday I had a cellular connection.
Today I started the phone again and was able to establish a cellular connection and use cellular data. Also was able to check the mails. (This was quite surprising to me because I faced very often a failure here during the last couple of days.)

After this I made the change in the settings for time/date to manually and changed the current time to a different one (-2 hours) and powered off the device.
After reboot I was not able to establish a cellular connection again. Situation persists even after changing the time back to current time and switching back to automatically. Proven by multiple reboots with with the settings (manual/wrong time; manual/correct time; automatically).
The only solution I´m aware of be able to get the cellular connection back to work is:

Activate Wi-Fi (to synchronize the time)
Power off & reboot
Enter SIM pin (and pray).
Result: Cellular connection was established successfully (again).

So I think issue is partly caused by the time synchronization. I fully agree with you "those problems are not mostly relative to the international roaming itself". Will update the issue.

Thanks for your hints & November will be coming soon.

A Former User

@Tellina

UT: 2020-10-14/2,
channel: dev

Hello, to whom it may concern.

UT on VollaPhone has been improved a lot.

Following issues are fixed now:

Carrier registration failing during booting device.
Carrier registration not reestablished after loosing the network connection, e.g. in tunnel, basement etc. .
Carrier registration failing abroad without reboot.

Data connection abroad is still not possible, but under investigation.

List of open issues can be found here:
https://github.com/HelloVolla/ubuntu-touch-beta-tests/issues

Due to this I will change the title.

Have a nice day.

Cheers,
T.