This is correct in the UK; hospital pagers, domestic smart meters for water and electricity, signalling systems for traffic monitoring and remotely controlled street lighting all use 2G because of the low power and bandwidth requirements. It is likely that 3G will be turned off before 2G here, which may still persist for many years to come until all of this essential public tech has been upgraded. GSM has been here in the UK since analogue mobile telephony was replaced and has been the dominant technology ever since. Everybody keeps talking now about 5G and how wonderful it is, and indeed my iphone 12 is 5G capable - its just that there is almost no reliable 5G coverage anywhere in the UK except in a very small number of large cities. If you live in the country you’re lucky if you can get reliable 4G coverage!
So… What are you, US users of SFOS, contemplating to do to address this issue?
Switched to AT&T compatible provider and figure I’ll buy new hardware once Jolla approves it before 2022.
What is the need for this thing which looks like an idiotic complication, when most landline phones now work on SIP using the Internet data link without the need for such things?
If I understood correctly, besides VoLTE hardware support in the device, SFOS has to implement software support for VoLTE as well.
That’s a pretty long story that has to do with how exactly VoLTE is implemented and binary blobs, and it depends on the exact device. Look up something along the lines of “how does VoLTE work”.
TL;DR your phone places a regular phone call at first then does some funky stuff (which only the modem could do) to tell the cell tower it’s upgrading the call to VoLTE
Yes, you understand correctly.
That would fit pretty much every single specification in the telecoms world I ever came across. 
Nah, GSM’s pretty heavily used in the US, with the exception of Verizon (who clings to CDMA). They just don’t care. There were still around 5 million customers on AT&T’s 2G network when they pulled the plug.
Well, there’s not much we can do, other than workarounds, until Jolla gets VoLTE working. The effective death of SFOS in the US is when the last US carrier shuts off 3G/2G. The work needed is pretty complicated, and some parts of it would touch the proprietary bits of the OS.
I also would. I wonder if it’d be possible to set up a bounty?
And SFOS did not implement VoLTE 'cause this protocol is only used in US and NOT in EU, Asia, Russia, etc?
It’s also used in the EU. I suspect they’re going to try to push it off until the last possible second (EU carriers also start requiring VoLTE or Rostelecom starts requiring it)
So looks like VoLTE is inevitable requirement worldwide, unless there is an alternative future protocol (5G or whatever comes next) and SFOS plans on committing efforts there and skipping VoLTE.
VoLTE is already used in the UK - my iphone 12 uses it if available; if not it just drops to 2G/3G to make the call.
I suspect that, despite what is being said publicly by Jolla on the implementation of VoLTE, they are already planning or working towards implementing VoLTE as soon as they can. It will simply not be credible to sell a phone OS that … ahem … will not be able to make phone calls. Can you imagine the damage it would do to their public reputation (even if their current target market currently does not require VoLTE) if they didn’t? We learnt today in the community meeting that Jolla are only really concentrating on corporate business customers and not consumers. How many new business customers do you think they will get when they try to sell a phone OS that can’t (or soon won’t be able to) make or receive phone calls? No business would take the risk, especially ones where their employees internationally travel. Reviews of the OS would be panned and Jolla’s credibility for selling a modern alternative phone OS would disappear fast. If they are genuinely have no plans for VoLTE then it will either be a sudden coffee selling moment or EOL for sailfish for anything but a hobby OS.
Their only clients are Russia and some various smaller countries, none of which are in any hurry to pick up VoLTE. I strongly suspect it’ll only be seriously worked on if Rostelecom starts requiring it.
I am also an avid Blackberry fan and have had Blackberry 10 phones for years (and still fire them up occasionally for fun). BB 10 went EOL a few years back and also is not VoLTE capable. The chatter across the globe on the BB forums is that on an increasing number of carriers, even ones that have yet to shutdown 2G/3G, phones that are non-VoLTE can not even be activated anymore on these carriers - even though they could still technically make calls on GSM or CDMA. Blackberry 10 devices are therefore turning into wifi only devices. The end is nigh!
I don’t think activation blocks are going to be a major issue for Sailfish, as they only check if the hardware is capable (via IMEI lookup) - which the Xperia 10, XA2, and maybe X are. You still wouldn’t be able to make calls though.
Then their international Sailfish X community will gradually disappear. Jolla need to be more forward looking than just one giant customer - too many eggs in one basket!
I understand you, but a tremendous missing opportunity leaving the US behind. The world has changed a lot in the last 7 years and Americans are now even more concerned about privacy than Europeans are, and also willing to pay more too.
On the other hand, Europe is a complicated market that requires different marketing strategies, lets not even mention availability to capital, it is very hard to grow fast in Europe, and in this market’s segment speed is crucial.
A privacy conscious hardware and OS European company would would now become immensely popular in the US, but of course it needs to work with the peculiarities of US carriers (mainly VoLTE, handling carriers and their frequencies), aspect that companies like old Nokia, Sony, SailfishOS, /e/ or Fairphone do not seem to be willing to accommodate. Soon enough, some American company (with foreign capital, including European!) will crack the US market and, subsequently, the European one too…and Europeans, once again, will scratch their heads on why is the US always that end up with all these large technological companies.