ingenium

Sometime in the last month or so, I noticed that while I do get the Wi-Fi Calling icon showing in SignalCheck Pro, all my calls still go over the mobile 1x network instead of over Wi-Fi.  This is on my Pixel 3 XL with latest updates.  Anyone else notice that?

It depends on your signal leve,l if you have it set to mobile preferred. Change it to wifi preferred and it will always use wifi calling when available.

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It's branded as "Webpass from Google Fiber", so either term works.  
What does Airrave 4 do that MagicBox Gold doesn't? 
 
It frankly took way too much calling to get this.  My journey to MB gold was a long one.  I had a MB before.  To get a "Gold", I had to return the original.  I did that, and then had to call to ordered the Gold.  I called, but got sent the same non-gold again. I returned that, and then was when return went through, was told Gold is out of stock and they can't order it until it's back in stock. Called a month later, but still out of stock.  Called a month later, but nothing arrived, order never placed or was lost.  Called again, but again, nothing arrived, order was lost or never placed.  Called the 3rd time, and this time the order arrived.  Getting an Arrive 4 might take long enough that I might as well just wait for the firmware upgrade that will enable/fix Wi-Fi.

Wow, I never had trouble ordering either one. You can get an Airave too without returning the MB, just tell them it's for a different address. Call 1-866-556-7310 and they should be able to order you one in a few minutes.

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I don't have a place where I get good reception and have ethernet, otherwise I'd do that.  However, I can try that as an experiment to see if it works.
In the current location with LTE backhaul, my magic box gives about .1 Mbit uplink which sometimes is 0 and times out.  The antenna feels worse than on my PIxel 3, so I'm really looking forward to using Wi-Fi which runs off of Google Fiber.
 

Yeah I would put in an order for an Airave 4 then. Then you can put it anywhere that you have Ethernet.

Google Fiber in SF? I know they bought Webpass a while ago (microwave backhaul), did they rebrand it to Google Fiber?

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I called in last night to check on my status. They told me there are two lists, one normal / non priority, and a priority. I was on the non priority list, presumably because I have a 3 that it's replacing and they're shipping them to people without an existing Airave first.

The rep moved me to the priority list and said I'll receive it this week or early next week. This morning I checked my account and the 4 is now showing up (with a 577 area code, which is no geographic and reserved for personal communication services).

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Ok. I'm able to select it, but sometimes it won't connect. But even when it does, I get no service. Which is not much different than without it.
A highrise went up better my condo and the tower, so already bad service is barely working now.

Won't connect to Ethernet? Yeah it's a known issue. It used to not work at all. Now it's supposedly live in a few markets, but has some issues still. On the west coast it can sometimes connect but 0 throughput on some sites. Their backend isn't ready yet.

Better to factory reset it and try for relay backhaul. The other option is to request an Airave 4 instead, since it works with wired backhaul now. Supposedly the LTE portion will broadcast at the same power as a MB. They're made by the same company and should use the same components.

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Is it on upload tho?

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Yes.

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Is there specific number you guys are calling? I tried chat and the number the rep gave me but they all just say they'll send in a request.

MB and Airave support 1-866-556-7310

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On Band 41?

I’ve gotten like 40 on band 25

It's 2xCA UL that's giving them that.

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I just got my MB Gold! Curious what the latest firmware that it should be running?
I'm asking since I keep getting errors connecting the backhaul to my Google WiFi router.

Wired and wifi backhaul is not working yet. Current ETA is end of June. You might have to factory reset it to get it back to relay backhaul.

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Do you have to use an external GPS antenna? Do they have an internal GPS antenna?

It will probably work without the antenna if you put it in a window, but if it's in the interior of your house (as it should be to get maximum coverage), then you'll need to use the external antenna and place it near a window. I just put mine on the window ledge and run the cord behind furniture, you can't see it unless you're looking for it.

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Me as well. I'm curious about something. If this does have VoLTE, if I start a VoLTE call on it and then go outside will it 1) continue onto the regular Sprint network

 

Yes. The Airave 3 (if you can get a VoLTE call to initiate on it, I have once) and MB will hand-off a VoLTE call to the macro network. Hand ins are the better question, ie will a VoLTE call transfer from the macro network to the Airave.

 

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27 minutes ago, Handyman said:

What firewall rule will disable the LTE on the AR3?  I have a magicbox and only have need for 1x from the Airave (We have 3 iPhones and 1 S9)

If you know a way to disable 3G, that would also be nice, if possible.

You can't disable 3G/evdo and keep 1x. They use the same IPsec connection. The Airave 3 has 2 IPsec tunnels, one for CDMA and one for LTE. CDMA establishes a tunnel to one of 10 domains: segw01.femto.sprint.net through segw10.femto.sprint.net. I don't remember if it picks one at random or if it tends to stick to the same one.

The LTE side does not do a DNS lookup, and uses the hardcoded IP 68.31.0.1. So setup a firewall rule to block access from the Airave IP to 68.31.0.1. Then power cycle the Airave. The LTE side will be unable to connect, leaving you with CDMA only.

As a side note, the subnet 68.31.0.0/16 is used at Sprint for LTE femto cells and wifi calling (at least devices on the new core, so anything that does VoLTE or Calling+). There seem to be different IPs for different devices. Ethernet backhauled Magic Boxes use 68.31.68.87. My Pixel always uses one that ends in a 7 (68.31.20.7, 68.31.26.7, 68.31.66.7, 68.31.0.7, 68.31.24.7). They are returned by the DNS records epdg.epc.mnc530.mcc312.pub.3gppnetwork.org and epdg.epc.mnc120.mcc310.pub.3gppnetwork.org, which return one of them randomly. The Essential phone on the other hand uses 68.31.26.2. 

So I went to my parents' new house yesterday and they had the Magic Box sitting in the kitchen window.  It was working and had excellent reception of B25 from Mont Alto, PA, mostly because their B25 in the house was excellent as well.  Their problem was with the sound quality of the voice service, which of course, the Magic Box won't help.
Now they have Comcast for a landline phone and Internet, and the Magic Box wasn't going to do anything for them anyway, so I took the Magic Box with me.  Part of me is tempted to try it here, but part of me thinks I should just return it.  Thoughts?
- Trip

The CDMA module for the magic box is supposed to be deployed soon. It plugs into the Ethernet port on the magic box and broadcasts 1x (and maybe evdo?). So that's an option for them.

Or they could get the Airave 4 which just launched. I think the CDMA parts are identical.

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I'm going to go ahead and say yes. All the 5G markets currently have VoLTE. So falling back to LTE for phone calls seems like the logical thing to do.

I *think* that the 5G spec allows carrier aggregation between 5G and LTE. I'm not sure if Sprint has implemented that yet.

So guess is that it will work natively on 5G without dropping to LTE. The fact that they can be aggregated and are fully backwards compatible implies that they have the equivalent of EUTRA sessions. One of the big selling points of 5G is the ability to do fine grained QoS and such. So VoLTE (or VoNR?) seems perfect for 5G.

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Are there any differences functionality wise between the 3 and 4? I currently have a 3 that works fine, just wondering if I should upgrade or not.

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Depends what phone you have. The 3 causes issues with VoLTE, and breaks incoming calls and SMS on eCSFB devices (Galaxy S6 era, maybe S7. Pixel 1. Etc). It used to work, but they broke something about a year ago and never fixed it. My guess is that whatever they did broke IMS. On my devices, it messes them up so bad that even when you leave Airave range, it will take 30 minutes or an airplane toggle to get calls and text working again. I ended up having to disable LTE on the Airave (via a firewall rule), leaving it CDMA only. Of course they broke it in what's seemingly the last update to the 3...

The 3 is end of life so won't be getting any fixes or updates. If you have no problems now, then you can keep it if you want. But guests might have issues, and if/when you have a VoLTE device it may cause problems as well. Basically you should eventually upgrade it, but if you aren't having problems there's no rush.

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The option just showed up, I am on Q Beta 3, but not rooted.  I am using eSIM.  When I go to the Radio info page it shows the VoLTE provisioned toggle on the enabled section as well...

Whoops, I missed that you're on Q. Yeah VoLTE is enabled in Q on Sprint, but not P unless you use a Magisk module.

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These were the next devices planned for VoLTE launch on Sprint. 

Yeah I'm just wondering how they turned it on. The config has to be part of the OS or can be added by installing an app signed with the same certificate that's used to sign the UICC (according to Android documentation). I didn't receive any carrier updates or anything that I'm aware of on my Pixel that would turn it on, which is why I'm curious how they did it. I'm rooted with the module to force it though, and don't particularly want to disable it to check (since it allows me to use VoLTE on my MB).

I'm wondering if enabling the toggle can be done with a profile update. And I'm also curious if the officially enabled Pixels have the same restrictions as other devices (ie, no MB usage, working only in approved markets, etc, that doesn't apply to forced devices).

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Pixel 3/3XL/3a/3aXL are all VoLTE-capable on Sprint. 

Yeah I know. But they haven't turned it on. Like the S9. The toggle hasn't been there. Same with the 3a. The only way to do it has been to use a root module to force it.

The option just showed up, I am on Q Beta 3, but not rooted.  I am using eSIM.  When I go to the Radio info page it shows the VoLTE provisioned toggle on the enabled section as well...

Nice! I'm wondering how they enabled it. It wasn't enabled with the May OTA.

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Noticed I had the option to turn on VoLTE on my Pixel 3XL today while I was at work in Providence, turned it on (and Wifi off), but could not surf the web at the same time.  Waited til I got home to Franklin, MA tried again and was able to make calls with wifi off and VoLTE enabled and surf the web...  Looks like it is going live in the Boston/Providence market...
Geoff

The option showed up on your 3 XL without the Magisk module to force VoLTE? In other words, you're not rooted?

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It might be worth it to reach out to the network team in that area. 

Definitely. I don't have any contacts though. I suspect it could be managed by the Ohio team rather than the Pittsburgh team, and the adjacent counties in Ohio are 2 5x5. So perhaps they were used to that config.

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3 minutes ago, RAvirani said:

Those two carriers are contiguous. They should be merged into a single 10x10 L1900 carrier. Not sure why they haven't been. 

Yeah I just looked up the earfcn -> frequency and updated my post just before you replied. I was mixing up the spectrum ownership with the adjacent county. I'm not sure why they didn't go 10x10 with Pittsburgh years ago then...

40 minutes ago, RAvirani said:

That is likely a configuration error and will be fixed soon. There are no advantages to running two adjacent 5x5 L1900 carriers. They should broadcast a single 10x10 L1900 carrier with EARFCN 8640/26640. 

It's not an error. It's the only available spectrum there I believe. It's had this configuration for a couple years, 2 5x5 carriers. The carriers are not contiguous. (My mistake, it looks like they are contiguous). I just checked my logs and I have entries first seen in 2017, and it still has that configuration as recent as a week ago.  Look on Cellmapper in the New Castle, PA area. Specifically along 422 from New Castle to Ohio.

I didn't have location logging turned on for SCP so I only have the GCI's and the name I put for each site. I'll have to walk around again. At this point I have a feeling its a high capacity site.

Usually high capacity sites have a sequential GCI. So for example, one will be 0A6592 and the other 0A6593. But that doesn't necessarily mean high capacity either, since GCIs are often clustered geographically. If they aren't sequential though, there's a pretty good chance those two don't belong to a high capacity site together.

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Yeah. With Sprint Merger they will be able to do 20x20 here then. 2G i think they said next year shutdown. They have shutdown 3G in some areas mostly where they couldn't do LTE if they didn't.

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Yeah I'm not sure what GSM costs them in terms of equipment. On Sprint, since the equipment is dual mode, they don't need new radios or anything, but it lowers the number of LTE carriers and MIMO streams possible per antenna port. I don't know if similar compromises have to be made with T-Mobile equipment, or if they actually have separate GSM radios and antennas.

If they plan to eventually shut down GSM, then there must be some compromise/cost to running it. Or perhaps the next gen equipment they plan to deploy can't do it?

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There are two QR code on the EM7565 for an IMEI and what I am presuming is the esim. Both are followed by just the numbers, they are engraved or laser printed in to the finish of the body. Model, FCC, IC id, Product of Vietnam. There is another lower and left 7 digit number, no idea.

 

The LM960 has a plain finish. There is a sticker with a single QR code. Next to the QR code the IMEI, Model, FCCid, IC number, and then underneath it says assembled in china. 

 

I will go with the EM7565 since I have more info, and the LM960 is my stable daily driver.

 

Maybe scan the QR code with your phone to see what it says? I use Barcode Scanner https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.zxing.client.android and it copies the text of the QR code to the clipboard automatically.

 

After a bit more research, the ICCID equivalent for an eSIM is the EID I believe. It's longer and is static for the device. The QR code tells the device where to go to download the the eSIM profile for the line you're trying to associate it with. It requires an alternative internet connection already present (ie, on a phone you need wifi, it can't use the network of the provider you're trying to add). The QR codes are one time use. Once you use it to set up an eSIM on a line, if you want to move the line to a different eSIM, you need a new QR code.

 

There must be some generated ID of some sort for the eSIM as well, since the spec says that you can have multiple profiles for a carrier on the same eSIM. So for example, you can have 2+ T-Mobile lines on the same device/eSIM, and switch between them.

 

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