Carriers

Posted Nov 7, 2017 17:13 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454)
In reply to: Carriers by epa
Parent article: An update on the Android problem

Connecting a phone to a cellular network requires a handshake and downloading network-specific parameters. The same mechanism is used for firmware updates, the phone asks the network 'is there an update for me, I am model X with firmware Y', and if the network infra answers yes and you accept the update the firmware is downloaded from network distribution nodes without being billed as 'internet access'.

That means carriers can block the distribution of updates even after they've been made available by the manufacturer, if they feel they are not ready, fear the result is incompatible with their infra, or are just lazy. That's why people with the same model, in the same country, can see different updates depending on their carrier.

I don't see carriers giving up this power easily. A bad update would cause lots of problems for them, especially if it hits a large number of phones at once. Trying to shortcut carriers with direct internet updates, would just result in carrier refusal to accept connexions from corresponding phones.

Just because carriers are very lax, on phones that received an update on another network, does not mean they are not ready to exert mass blocking, if it gets out of hands. Carriers trust the choices of other carriers. The number of devices that plug in their network after receiving updates somewhere else is necessarily limited (making their users good guinea pigs to shake out eventual incompatibilities). They do not trust you or any internet update mechanism, that could result on mass firmware updating of existing customer phones, outside their control. If there is an incompatibility customers would blame them. Right now if you roam inside a network, with an update the carrier didn't approve, and it does not work, you blame the roaming.

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Carriers

Posted Nov 7, 2017 20:13 UTC (Tue) by jem (subscriber, #24231) [Link] (3 responses)

A thought experiment: replace each occurrence of "carrier" and "phone firmware update" with "internet service provider" and "PC operating system update". Why do these have to be different? In large parts of the world there is no difference.

Carriers

Posted Nov 7, 2017 22:20 UTC (Tue) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (2 responses)

Because in large swathes of the world bandwidth is still rather expensive.
The obvious solution is updating via WLAN … but that idea doesn't fit the typical carriers' mindset.

Carriers

Posted Nov 8, 2017 7:40 UTC (Wed) by gioele (subscriber, #61675) [Link] (1 responses)

> Because in large swathes of the world bandwidth is still rather expensive.

Also fixed-line bandwidth can be expensive (think Australia or rural EU). This does not stop Windows from downloading gigabytes of updates.

> The obvious solution is updating via WLAN … but that idea doesn't fit the typical carriers' mindset.

In my own experience, EU carriers makes you pay for the bandwidth used for the updates (and this is how it should be, otherwise it would be against net neutrality principles). For this reason, everybody I know updates their phones only via WiFi.

Carriers

Posted Nov 17, 2017 22:34 UTC (Fri) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]

I don't see how making phone update traffic free would be against net neutrality, provided this is true for all "phone firmware distributions". Even better, expand that to (security) updates of firmwares & operating systems of all internet-connected devices.

Carriers

Posted Nov 10, 2017 17:02 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> The same mechanism is used for firmware updates, the phone asks the network 'is there an update for me, I am model X with firmware Y', and if the network infra answers yes and you accept the update the firmware is downloaded from network distribution nodes without being billed as 'internet access'.

I really don't think this is happening when you don't buy the phone from a telco. By the way most phones recommend you switch to wifi before accepting to download.

> That means carriers can block the distribution of updates even after they've been made available by the manufacturer, [...] Trying to shortcut carriers with direct internet updates, would just result in carrier refusal to accept connexions from corresponding phones.

Again this is only for phones bought from the telco (which is very rare in some countries)

> I don't see carriers giving up this power easily. A bad update would cause lots of problems for them, especially if it hits a large number of phones at once

Updates from Google are always staggered (Apple may be different)