If only the prices weren’t that horrifying, for something that in my wife’s iPhone was solved by switching on VoWiFi and forgetting about any signal problems in the entire house and around it.
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WTF why would anybody buy this if VoWIFI could solve the problem!?
This is not a solution for Jolla’s (and therefore our) problems, this is only a workaround. This is only a solution for the situation ‘radio reception possible outdoor but not indoor’.
Surely Jolla better should keep SFOS up to date.
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There’s no solution from jolla and someone is trying to help fix the problem with an idea.
No need to be rude to him for trying to help and not just complain.
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That’s right, and thank you for suggesting this. It surely is a solution when there’s no other option.
The problem is the price. An important thing to note is that those cheapest ones (up to 200 euros) are single band devices and it’s risky to invest in them while e.g. my operator (T-Mobile PL) uses four LTE bands (2100, 1800, 2600 and 800 MHz) and they won’t tell you which of those bands will eventually operate in your area. The now barely usable 4G signal seems to be 800 MHz band, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that they will further develop the surrounding network using that band and not any of the remaining three and even shut down the current band in favor of the others… There are multi-band units covering all bands, but they cost several times more… Which sadly is beyond my budget at this point. Compared to this, it’s simply so much easier (no additional antennas on the roof, holes for cables, another device to run 24/7 sucking some additional 5 Watts, and so on) and cheaper to just use a VoWiFi capable device/OS (at least temporarily) while the whole needed infrastructure (WiFi network) is already there anyway…
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Aren’t these things illegal too?
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I don’t think so. It’s advertised and sold masswise since many years and nobody does anything against it. Also in facility engineering this is used to grant reception inside large buildings.
I’ve just checked and according to the official website of the Polish Police it is indeed ILLEGAL (and punishable) to use such devices…
Google translated to English (so hopefully comprehensible) text:
So, it looks that it isn’t punishable to sell them, but you can’t use them then. Just like it was with sat TV card splitters and things like that.
Maybe one has to declare / register, depending of the actual country’s law. I also don’t know and have no such device in use.
edit: The page is from Germany (Berlin), despite the ‘.at’ URL. They also cooperate with electricians and make their offer very official to tradesmen and also general public. No word about some authorization requirement.
In the above article they say:
The reason for the illegality of this type of devices is, among others, the fact that its use leads to interference in the frequency of the GSM/UMTS licensed band, reserved for the telecommunications undertaking. Therefore, radio emission in this frequency band by unauthorized persons is an unlawful activity. Such action violates the frequency order and is done at the expense of other GSM network users, who have less coverage or no coverage at all. A repeater installed in the vicinity may lead to the termination of telephone calls, complete deprivation of subscribers’ ability to make and receive them, and prevent data transmission in mobile networks. At the same time, this translates into a potential threat to their life and health by preventing contact with the services appointed to provide assistance.
The use of GSM/UMTS signal amplifiers is allowed only by a telecommunications undertaking holding a nationwide reservation of frequencies used to provide services via base stations. In case of problems with the strength of the cellular signal, contact your operator to install the appropriate device. Only the installation of an amplifier by the network operator guarantees that the problem with the signal in our environment will be solved without harming other mobile phone users
Possession of an amplifier without the required permit is an offense punishable by a fine of up to PLN 1,000. The court may also order forfeiture of the device. If its owner uses it in a persistent manner, the perpetrator is subject to criminal liability for a crime and is subject to a fine, restriction of liberty or imprisonment for up to 2 years. Art. 208 of the Telecommunications Act
Which indeed sounds reasonable. It is doubtful that any individual person can get permission to use such a device. Getting a permission to use it (i.e. emit radio waves at licensed bands) is probably purely theoretical, in practice not possible. I definitely won’t risk using such device if the police themselves officially state its illegality. And I wouldn’t risk that someone might sue me for not being able to make an emergency call because of my repeater (even just allegedly) interfering locally with the network signal.
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That’s very understandable.
I’m just trying to get my head around the issue, so please bear with me…
My GF’s parents live in a relatively isolated area, nevertheless, when I place a call in the open, some distance from the house, I will actually often get 4G. Briefly. In the house, no chance. I have been dropped to 2G where, quality was not sterling, but nothing nearly as extreme as you mention. Generally, in the house, I use the stationary phone.
So, I’m guessing that you must be even further off the beaten track? In which case, I ask myself why not voip, or is that not an option? I’m pretty ignorant here… And I avoid using the phone as anything other than a pocket calculator 
Exactly the case. And as 4G calling works perfectly fine in other places with strong 4G network signal, I guess it’s safe to assume that the problem is too weak 4G signal in vincinity.
While on 2G, there are several easily distinguishable voice quality levels. At first, when there’s 2.5G indicator on the display voice quality is only slightly worse than on 4G. But after some short time during the call, the indicator further turns to 2G, mobile data connection (EDGE?) gets disconnected, and at this very moment voice quality often becomes barely usable. Clearly, at this point some least demanding codec is being used due to insufficient signal quality (probably too high error rate, SNR, or something like that). Sometimes it then goes even further and one party stops hearing the other one, or the call just terminates.
And that while my wife, sitting 3 meters away from me, has crystal clear calls via VoWiFi, which took switching on one option in her phone’s settings… So no wonder that i envy her 
While OK with family, friends, etc., I’m not sure if some important and serious contacts would consider me serious if I expected them to call me via some messenger, voip or things like that. I mean, they have my mobile number and would like to reach me on it regardless if I am at home or not at home.
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With a VoIP provider you have a normal telephone number and you can use it in the whole world and you have the same number whereever you are. Maybe Duck (or g**gle) e.g. ‘VoIP provider private’, because most VoIP providers address companies, not all sell to private persons.
Interesting. I had also only seen that at the GF’s and just yesterday on my balcony (while speeding up GPS foo) … I was a bit startled since I have very good 4G here. I wonder if there is some metric askew? 2.5 was new to me although I had seen 2 often enough (hiking, for instance).
voip is not different from VoWiFi which is just doing voice over ip using existing wifi networks. That is, the provider of your sim card is off loading the work to the provider of your internet. Only be a matter of time before that becomes an issue. There are voip providers that offer normal telephone numbers and sim cards, for instance, sipgate ( a german company that also serves the UK and a couple of other markets). Sipgate covers all the angels so that you can have complete coverage (sim card, LTE, voip on voip devices, pcs). But I don’t know what the premium costs. I’ve had some dealings with them, and they are a really nice company. We used them at my last employer and I was pretty impressed. But I don’t personally use them. I’m just thinking maybe a hybrid provider?
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You’re probably better off switching to a different provider that introduced good enough 4G coverage (or even 2G in your case if that’s unacceptable, that’s been a standard for decades now so doubt they reduced their 2G coverage to unacceptable levels) before switching off 3G. While in theory it’s similar to volte sfos never promised that feature and no matter what words you’ll capitalise next it’s not a copy paste of volte as you have two interfaces involved with some SIM secrets involved to enroll you, maybe easy enough for apple/google, I wouldn’t expect anything more than a buggy BETA just like with VoLTE in the next few months. (unless you have actual experience in implementing it and can help jolla the ‘don’t exaggerate how hard it could be’ comments are absurdly condescending, I guess 5G support is just turning a kernel config switch to on)
Yes, they did, because 2G signal used to be a solid and stable ~100% even just a year or so ago. I even had a habit to always switch my phone to 2G when going to bed to reduce its battery usage. Now 2G signal is 15% and below.
Can’t really do until my contract with the current operator ends. Either I would have to pay for breaking the contract, or if I just left it alone until it ends I couldn’t move my number to a different provider until then, which for many reasons isn’t acceptable for me.
But all that really has little to do with VoWiFi.
I never stated they did.
Why does it bother you how I use my keyboard? I don’t think I capitalise more than 0.5% of what I write, which shouldn’t be more than you can handle.
I didn’t expect more than that, either. I actually expect just giving it a chance and at least trying and seeing whether it might be doable.
I’d say that I do help in my way. Several hundred corrections of the UI translation in my language, a few bugs reported, thoroughly tested and tracked down, etc. I do not think I am just a complaining person, nor do I think I am obliged to excuse myself to you. So please kindly cut that scolding tone, thank you.
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And yet you keep playing an expert: this is easy, porting to X 10 IV is a waste of time because porting will have to start from scratch… That’s not how it works, neither working with blobs to reverse engineer their functionality for hybris (with two adapters no less), nor porting android 14 is from scratch vs 13, but you keep enlightening us how it works in your mind and another WALL of text, just chill (or show us your work, afaict you’re one of the BB10 OS devs that came here when it finally died hoping to sell your qml apps here, most seem to have left, where’s your developing new tech for hybris exp, or even porting exp?)
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Where are these devs that you mentioned by the way? I would gladly pay for good apps instead of scraping here and there for half working community ports in some cases.
I know that you intended to use that as an insult, but it piqued my interest!
We had 4-5 polish sounding names join 1-1.5 year ago, one of them explained his background so I’m kinda guessing, but it did seem like devs abandoning BB sinking ship, jacekjagosz, lolek, wetab, only him stayed I’m afraid (edit: and afaict we got exactly zero apps out from that polish invasion which is a shame)