Posted by Hlcn Twst
When an
phone displays the carrier name, is that name pulled from the tower in use or the SIM card?
I'm guessing the SIM card. My carrier, Cingular, is (once again) becoming AT&T. My friend with an HTC Hermes (also on Cingular) saw the displayed network name change from "Cingular" to "AT&T" a few weeks back, even though he has a Cingular SIM card. OTOH, my W810 and my wife's K551 (each with a Cingular SIM card) both still show "Cingular." This is the case throughout our area.
Is there a setting to change this? (On Motorola's, there's a SEEM edit that can do this.)
Posted by masseur
I'd say its the tower because no matter where I roam in the world I always see the carrier name that I am connected to
sometimes I have seen two carriers, the local roaming one and my home one on a second line
Posted by michka
Same as Masseur.
I guess it is from the carrier, not the sim card.
I have a belgian sim, bought from a belgian carrier. However, when visiting the US, the phone shows the name of the US carrier.
Same when I go to another country (France, Germany, Canada, UK, ...): the name is from the local carrier I am connected to.
Posted by alrodlop35
It's definitely from the network. It's just that it takes longer for SE phones. My carrier changed its name from OLA to Tigo and friends using Nokias saw the change immediately, but it took almost a month for my W800 to change.
Posted by maggflodd
definitely tower NOT sim! Voda-ireland recently performed a little "live" test,
so for 4 or 5 days their prepay customers showed a "@" on the screen where there's usually "vodafone.ie"... unfortunately they went back to "vodafone.ie" - but yeah, I checked: they can remotely chanage it, and it's nothing to do with the sim!!!
Posted by jcwhite_uk
It gets it from the tower. As far as I am aware the tower only sends a unique network id code which then phone compares against its database as older phones still say bt cellnet instead of O2 and one 2 one instead of t-mobile
Posted by michka
Then I guess if the phone does not find it in it's database, it asks the network for the name. Because when travelling I can see the name changing according to the signal strength of the various networks at the location. Funniest was when visiting the Niagara: moving by some meters the name would change from US networks to canadian ones and back. None of which my belgian phone knew about as they were very local networks.
Posted by Hlcn Twst
Hmmm... I'll have to wait and see, then, if/when the name changes.
Posted by maggflodd
On 2007-05-03 16:49:08, michka wrote:
Then I guess if the phone does not find it in it's database, it asks the network for the name. Because when travelling I can see the name changing according to the signal strength of the various networks at the location. Funniest was when visiting the Niagara: moving by some meters the name would change from US networks to canadian ones and back. None of which my belgian phone knew about as they were very local networks.
Posted by fatreg
it's a bit of both to be fair boys and girls...
mainly the network but without the subscriber identity module (SIM) you ain't getting anywhere.
your sim card is a very very clever bit of kit, currently either 64 or 128k cards, they do a lot more than hold 100 phone numbers, 15 sms and your number.
SIM cards store network specific information used to authenticate and identify subscribers on the Network, the most important of these are the ICCID, IMSI, Authentication Key (Ki), Local Area Identity (LAI). The SIM also stores other carrier specific data such as the SMSC (Short Message Service Centre) number, Service Provider Name (SPN), Service Dialing Numbers (SDN), and Value Added Service (VAS) applications.
see SPN.... and yes the network can remotely change it, but do you not remember the days on a nokia where you could have your own operator logo? your network did not change that for you...
they are kind of antagonistic, without the SIM the tower won't know what's happening and without the base station the SIM won't know what's happening!
it is most definitely not 100% the tower...
a wee lesson in SIM cards for you
Posted by djsaad1
You can buy those 12-1 sim cards on ebay and clone your current sim card to one of them. While doing that you can also edit the 12-1 sim card to let it write whatever you want as the operator name.
My guess is that the original sim card code just states put whatever text the tower sends to you but that could probably be changed if you were able to edit the original sim card like you could the 12-1.
Posted by Hlcn Twst
I'd rather have the phone show me the name of the network it's currently using...
Posted by OluYom
Fatreg presented the most accurate info on this topic yet: it is a combination of both SIM and tower, also sometimes depending on how each network has configured things to work.
My wife uses a SIM from Celtel Nigeria, which used to be known as ECONET Wireless. Her SIM displays "Celtel" on the phone, yet I have run into others whose phones still display "ECONET". Note that the transition to Celtel was implemented over a year ago, and these differences were observed with both lines under the coverage of the same tower.
It certainly cannot be 100% tower; and its not 100% SIM either. I understand that networks are able to update SIM data remotely; so it shouldn't be too difficult to see a sort of seamless operation between tower and SIM.
Posted by Sammy_boy
I think it could possibly be the actual phone!
I remember when BT Cellnet changed it's name to O2-UK, many older phones did (and still do) display 'BT Cellnet' instead of O2 as the network name - try it if you have an old 8210, 3310, or 6210 and you'll see!