Determine Carrier

[smarkwell]

Is there are realiable way to determine which carrier the phone is on at any given time?

Without using a remote server would be preferable.

-Scott

[ruben]

Refer the following FAQ, which will provide you necessary info.

http://www.qualcomm.com/brew/developer/resources/ds/faq/techfaq25.html#T1G

ruben

[Roadkill]

*IF* the carrier is filling it out correctly, ITAPI_GetStatus will return you a TAPISTATUS structure, the first member of which is szMobileID. That's the phone's MIN.

A phone's MIN is *supposed* to be 5 characters which identify the country (3) and carrier (2), plus 10 characters that identify the handset. Verizon, at least, uses the handset's phone number as the last 10 digits of the MIN, but that's not guaranteed. Note that the FAQ claims that the last 10 digits are always the handset's area code and phone number, but that is not correct.

As the FAQ points out, you're not guaranteed to get any useful information out of the first 5 characters.

[smarkwell]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Funny, I've used ITAPI before never noticed that :)

[ruben]

You also can use ISHELL_GetDeviceInfoEx function.

ruben

[smarkwell]

Hmm knowing that earlier, ruben,would have saved a couple thousand on tier 2 submissions :)

[Krishna]

We have been trying to use the combincation of MCC and MNC to determine the carrier who owns the netwrok on which the application executes. We need this in order to deliver BREW-directed SMS messages correctly (every carrier uses a different mechanism to deliver SMS messages).

However:
1. Several OEMs only pass zeros instead of the MNC and the MCC
2. While the MCC can be trusted (except in the case described in #1) the MNC is very often 00 which makes it impossible to differentiate between Verizon Wireless and US Cellular for example.

I am desprately looking for a reliable way to identify the carrier. Several options we consider:
1. On the server identify the carrier according to the IP of the phone (the IP used to start the TCP/IP connection)
2. Submit a different application per each carrier - I would like to avoid this as much as possible
3. Identify the carrier according to the area code which is included in the mobile number. As far as I know this will only work between carriers who do not cover the same geographical area

Any idea or experience which can be shared will be highly appreciated.

[gdb]

It's been a while since the last posting. Has there been any update? Have you found a solution short of using different builds? using the IP when connecting to a server?

We are looking to solve this as well for an application we're doing.

Thanks!

[smarkwell]

No solution. Still unreliable to determine the carrier of origin. Especially with number protibility laws. Also, recently a court was ruling in favor of IP portablility (.... no real comment on that) that may become a not possible solution shortly.