the definite VoLTE deadline date in the USA is now known

TotalSonic

alt text

Of relevance to UT users in USA only - to date T-mobile has been the one network that has allowed UT devices to continue reliably sending and receiving calls, as other networks have already made VoLTE support a requirement for this, but I just received this notice that as of July 1, 2022 T-mobile will only enable calls via VoLTE. AT&T will also shut down its 3G network for all calls later this month on February 22, 2022.

Initial road map towards developing VoLTE support for UT can be read at https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/first-steps-in-volte-support-for-ubuntu-touch-3768 and at https://www.jeroenbaten.nl/UT-VoLTE-proposed-technical-architecture.pdf
Given that the core UT dev team is currently engaged in the huge tasks of rebasing UT to Ubuntu 20.04, as well as maintaining the current 16.04 release for 78+ devices - a 5 month window to enable VoLTE support seems unrealistically optimistic at this point.

Regardless of what happens with VoLTE support development, I will definitely continue to run UT devices as secondary Wifi ones, and will certainly try to contribute to the community - but on a pragmatic level, calls are a vital part of what my daily driver phone needs to do.

SIP is possibly another option for enabling calls on UT, and the Linphone app 0.9.2 arm64 beta click which has been available for testing seems to be functional, even though buggy in my tests (my connection to Linphone account only worked when Wifi was off, so mobile data on only) - but I am not sure how well this would work for receiving all calls.

Quoting UT user "rocket2infinty":
SIP integration into the dialer, or linphone (with added dialer) would be the easier solution to our problem, but no one is working on it. I'm a hardware guy, so I lack the software skills to do it myself
The UT linphone app works with a TLS connection, but no option for UDP connections (which happen to be the majority for most home service SIP providers)
I have experimented with this for the last year anticipating 3G shutdown. I have solutions, but they require some help finishing, SIP service in the dialer or linphone. Maybe that now it's crunch time, someone with the skills will give us a boost"

Anyway - I would be happy to donate into any fund that goes towards a developer working on either better SIP support (and there certainly is a good start with the Linphone app) or VoLTE support (which seems like the bigger and more difficult chore at this point) - and truly hope that if my ability to use Ubuntu Touch for my daily driver phone capable of making and receiving calls is disrupted, that this will be only a temporary interruption, as I truly prefer UT over any other mobile OS.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Lumpology

@totalsonic That really is too bad to see. In Canada we have 3G until 2025. I really hope that VoLTE development does not go too far beyond the cutoff date. I would like to be able to take my UT phone down south.
I concur with that if there was a way to donate directly to VoLTE on UT development that I would be more then willing to do so.

Alter

@totalsonic : sad to hear that 3G is nearing its end in the US very soon, and you might have to temporarily leave UT as daily driver because of currently still missing VoLTE support in UT. I can understand you don't want to leave, and hope you won't have to!

SIP sounds like a possible workaround. I couldn't find the UT Linphone app you mentioned in OpenStore, though. Where did you find it? And how would you set up? Do you connect your IP landline telephone number? But Linphone app needs to get UDP.

I guess other mobile Linux OS'es will also have same issue with ending 3G support in the US. If that is the case, maybe a team across different OS'es could work on VoLTE or a (temp) SIP based workaround together? Or perhaps this is already happening.

Maybe you can ask a UT core dev about it.

Even though I'm not living in your part of the world, and am currently in the fortunate situation to have 2-5G in my country, I feel your pain and would be glad to donate for the development of VoLTE or an alternative for UT that keeps US users aboard!

If I would have dev skills myself, I'd love to contribute. Alas, that is not something I can offer

Rondarius

I think that UT and the other open OS’s needs to look on other solutions for phonecall, sms, mms, volte. We will have a very hard time to get VOLTE working because of proprietary hardware/software and just like mms, different vendors uses different methods to implement hardware and software. How many phones will have Volte? At best a handful. It might be more after a few years, don’t forget that with the move to 20.04, you have ten years support, yes we will ”only” have eight years, but look how far UT has come just in these years?
The solution that I am proposing is the same as mentioned above. We probably going to have to use a third party solution something like Signal to replace the phone app and the message app on our phones. I think that we really need to think outside the box with our platform. I think that we need to start focus on if there is other open source, freeware, that could make our platform more cloudbased/iot so that we are able to sync almost all of the core apps, on our other devices like servers, desktop, laptop, family, friends and so on. The workload on the developers is just to high. They can handle everything that pops up but it will take alot of time and frankly how many users have we dropped because of the development takes to long?

Here is just a few I think that needs to be done in a near future:

Signal: Phonecalls, groups, videocalls, sms/mms and having this synced on all linux devices.

Nextcloud server: If Ubports should host a Nextcloudserver, how many would pay a monthlty fee to have this to sync/backup your phone and be able to use all of its features as, calendar, email and more.

I have surely missed a lot of other things that could replace the core apps. Yes I know the world is constantly changing, for example if someone buys Signal, what should we do then? I don’t know but we really need to find other solutions. We have to find ways to bring in more money, and this is not going to happen as long as we don’t have a fully working phone. I don’t know if ”forcing” users to sign up on other platforms just to have a working phone is the right way to go either. But we need to brake free from what we see as a standard feature, there is no such thing anymore.

dizzy

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dizzy

@rondarius said in the definite VoLTE deadline date in the USA is now known:

Nextcloud server: If Ubports should host a Nextcloudserver, how many would pay a monthlty fee to have this to sync/backup your phone and be able to use all of its features as, calendar, email and more.

Could you explain a little bit more what you mean by that? How would that work?

Rondarius

@dizzy
Hahaha
I could try, lets see, most of these features needs to be a stand alone app, we have the rw permission that prevent us from having it within the OS itself and that was not my intention either, the suggetions was meant for app developers to create and maintain and not the core developers, easing the burden. How about a webapp to sync with nextcloud? When users is getting used to the concept the core app could be removed or not displayed, if it's connected to the functionality of the OS. I don't know if you are able to have an app that only displays the calendar, email and more from within nextcloud. I was just brainstorming and as I wrote earlier, there is probably alot of other solutions to look at. We need to find other ways for our OS.

dizzy

@rondarius Thanks for the explaination! I could see myself paying for that but if we are talking about that you have to use UT's Nextcloud as the only option, then I think its a misstake. UT should not be "locked in". My two cents....

Rondarius

@dizzy
No, no one should be forced to anything. When it comes to nextcloud, it was a suggestion. Of course you should be able to use your own setup or none at all.

dizzy

@rondarius I could definitely pay for hosting my Nextcloud at UBPorts if that would make them earn some money. Remember Ubuntu One by the way? Long time ago

Rondarius

@dizzy
I was hoping for Canonical to host an email service too

flohack

@rondarius one correction for UBuntu LTS: Its supported for 5 years, which means that by now we have only 3 years left until we need to shift to 24.04

The idea is also to maybe move to STS versions again - a mobile phone distro on long term support means we always will have outdated packages of everything, and are constantly struggling in an ever-changing IT world.

Having an STS or even rolling release would be much better, also because upgrading constantly smaller parts of our OS is much easier than locking down everything every 3 years or so.

flohack

Will be a sad day for UT...

VoLTE is as far as a galaxy away. This is still lightyears from a sustainable solution, as already some posters remarked, VoLTE support will come to a few chosen devices only, if ever. As long as that thing is not standardized its impossible for smaller projects to reverse-engineer that part, also as typically in Android the same vendor makes their stuff incompatible already with the next device (Not even talking about multiple vendors), and for every model we need again to dive into this.

The same applies to eSIM: We need to learn a lot from unofficial sources so to say how to implement the right protocols.

Until there is decent open hardware this will prevent any proliferation of open technology.

dizzy

@flohack Hum, that's depressing. In Sweden 2G and 3G will be shut down before 2025 at latest.
To me this sounds like the end for UT. At least in its current form...

Keneda

@flohack said in the definite VoLTE deadline date in the USA is now known:

Until there is decent open hardware this will prevent any proliferation of open technology.

What about the PP and PPP ?

flohack

@keneda well they are good candidates, idk which modem is in the PPP, but they need to be made more usable with UT, thats also not easy.

But yes, probably good candidates (if they work with VoLTE in the US, idk, US is special for everything)

rocket2nfinity

@flohack PP and PPP share the same modem - quectel eg25g. It already does VoLTE on UT without any instruction from UT for it to do so. It even works with Verizon.

messayisto

@rocket2nfinity That sounds awesome - can somebody confirm for the EU?

dizzy

@messayisto Should not be a problem in EU with PP or PPP.

GeekBone

@flohack I guess I am still confused about all of this. I have a Pixel 3a that is loaded with Android (My UT phone is a Nexus 5) and I am on T-Mobile. I received notification that my Nexus 5 would no longer work, but they said my other phones will be fine. (Wife has a pixel 3), so wouldn't UT still work on the 3a?