GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 742838
[m-b-p-i] Multiple operators with same MCCMNC
Last modified: 2020-11-12 14:29:34 UTC
I'm not sure whether we should specify in the same way the MCCMNC values of real operators, and the MCCMNC values of virtual operators which end up reusing MCCMNC from real ones. E.g. Orange in Spain owns 21403, and HappyMovil re-uses that same MCCMNC. The service providers database lists both with: <network-id mcc="214" mnc="03"/> And that will actually kind of break looking up provider given MCCMNC (nma_mobile_providers_database_lookup_3gpp_mcc_mnc() call, used by gnome-shell and gnome-control-center among others), as it will return the first provider found matching the MCCMNC, even if it's not the real one. I'm sure there's some use in having the MCCMNC of the virtual operator listed (is there?), but shouldn't we use some other field and not "network-id"?
Quoting from IRC discussion with Aleksander: <thaller> if different operators share the same MCCMNC, shouldn't then nma_mobile_providers_database_lookup_3gpp_mcc_mnc() return multiple results? <aleksander0m> the MCCMNC is owned by one operator only, that's the thing <aleksander0m> when you scan for networks in a modem you'll get a list with MCCMNCs and that's the list that gives you which operators (real ones) are around <aleksander0m> then, the real operator will relicense the use of its MCCMNC to other virtual operators <aleksander0m> nma_mobile_providers_database_lookup_3gpp_mcc_mnc() is really a fallback call; it allows to get a string to show to the user when mccmnc is available from the network but not the operator name string <aleksander0m> right now it'll be broken as e.g. it may show me "happymovil" operator name when in reality it should show "Orange", which is the real network provider giving the 21403 MCCMNC network <thaller> ok, with this explanation, it sounds like the virtual operators should not share the MCCMNC. <aleksander0m> at least not defined in the same way in the serviceproviders.xml file <thaller> maybe add a new tag like <virtual-network-id /> ? <aleksander0m> yeah, that would be superb Then Aleksander pointed out that this will be a lot of work, because alone in Spain there are 10+ such cases. As a first step, probably we should introduce <virtual-network-id> (or whatever the name) in the XML DTD. Then we can fix the entries incrementally.
I think the technical term is "MVNO" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operator)
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