This post is conclusion of the discussion in MoMo Bangalore mailing group.
Use of IMEI to determine phone make/model and thus their capabilities is fairly old technology now. “Mobile Device Management”, or “Automatic Device Detection”, used for device-specific Over-The-Air (OTA) provisioning of your devices, or even for the customer-support personnel to give your device-specific technical help. Last but not least, one final addition to the usage list is blocking the mobile user w.r.t to the tariff. So technical feasibility is very high. it is just a question, whether they are doing it or not? “misuse of technology”!!
Now we will see how and where it is blocked.
Any mobile should establish a PDP connection for connecting to the Internet. GPRS connection establishment has the following steps
1) PDP Attach with information about mobile
2) Identity response from the SGSN
3) Sending IMEI number for verification
4) ACK for IMEI check [It fails here]
5) PDP Activate (APN)
6) DNS query
7) DHCP
8 ) Dynamic IP allocation (say 10.x.x.x) [So IP address is not allocated to iPhone or any PDA for Airtel Online APN]
1) PDP Attach with information about mobile
2) Identity response from the SGSN
3) Sending IMEI number for verification
4) ACK for IMEI check [It fails here]
5) PDP Activate (APN)
6) DNS query
7) DHCP
8 ) Dynamic IP allocation (say 10.x.x.x) [So IP address is not allocated to iPhone or any PDA for Airtel Online APN]
It is not the limitation of the phone (iPhone or any PDA) capability. After IP allocation, it can go through the proxy address, 100.1.200.99:8080 to reach any WAP / HTTP site. So iPhone supporting WAP or only HTTP is not the question. All these things are happening far before the site access.
IPhone is able to establish a PDP session and get one dynamic IP address for Airtel Live APN and able to browse any website but not to “Airtel Online” APN even though the mechanism is same. So it is not H/W or S/W limitation.
A) Phones support “Airtel Online”
N80, N72, most of Nokia phones, Sony Erisson W series and so on…
A) Phones support “Airtel Online”
N80, N72, most of Nokia phones, Sony Erisson W series and so on…
B) Phones does not support “Airtel Online”
iPhone, Nokia Communicator, O2 handsets, Dopod handsets, HP iPAQ, HTC Touch and so on..We have to understand from this, “all PDA phones not supported” . I don’t believe that it is because of the phone H/W or S/W limitation. It is clear that some network node is denying the connection.
I think we need to understand the limitation
I think we need to understand the limitation
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Pingback by Airtel 99Rs Unlimited GPRS plan is limited « People’s Communication — January 13, 2008 @ 11:41 am |
Hey,
Airtel Care said the same crap to me but I managed to run Internet over 99/month plan using the proxy on My HTC S710 smartphone.
Not sure if it’ll work on iPhone though.
Comment by Chirag Gupta — February 16, 2008 @ 5:41 pm |
You are right. It depends on the model. I too tried running a proxy in the iPhone. Same proxy works for limited plan (cost per KB tariff) but not for the unlimited plan (99Rs per month).
Comment by Janakg — February 17, 2008 @ 9:10 pm |
So, if thiis is the case. Is there any possiblilty to fake IMEI of Limited functionality phone and get the IP Address from the gateway.. Some one let know if we could acheive this. i’m not sure if IMEI tampering is possible though, just a pointer.
Comment by Kalyan — February 19, 2008 @ 2:14 pm |
Yes possible to change the IMEI number, there are ways to change the IMEI number. We should not do it becuase we will loose the international identity and phone tracking in case of theft will become difficult. they change the imei number in theft phones. it is an offense.
references
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMEI (for information about IMEI)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/03/27/imei_numbers_no_antidote/
Comment by Janakg — February 22, 2008 @ 10:48 am |
i have nokia 9300i phone. I have configured “Airtel RS.99 per month (NOP) ” GPRS plan. In my iPhone its not working.
pl tell me what to do.
Comment by jitendra — July 20, 2009 @ 4:34 pm |