Blacklist single Mobile Operator

[kratenko]

Hallo,

we have a product that is out in the field and working, using NB-IoT and LTE-M. We prefer not setting an explicit Operator for our LTE-connections, since our SIM allows multiple different once to be used. So we have the bonus of using the best reception of any of those for a given location.

One of our clients has the issue, that one of the providers that can be selected for their SIM does not work. The modem establishes a connection to the provider, but we cannot access any servers and are not able to use the connection for anything. The problem is, that the modem is totally fine with this connection.

Is there any way to blacklist this operator, so that the modem will not connect to it? It would also be fine for us to whitelist the 3 operators we want to support.

Right now I can only tell the modem to use one specific operator or to accept any it finds. I could implement app logic to work around this problem, but those solutions would not be ideal for time and power usage. I could either try the whitelisted operators until I find one - this would take a lot of time and will most likely not find the best solution. Or I could have modem roam and disconnect every time I get the blacklisted one - but I'm afraid that I will just end up with the black listed one over and over again, if that one has the best reception.

So is there any way to solve this problem inside the modem?

Thanks

[Torje]

Hi,
Very interesting dilemma! Just out of curiosity: Can you share what SIM-provider you are using? Thanks!

Just another community member,
Torje

[kratenko]

It is our customer's one, and know, I cannot tell you, sorry. But there are multiple ones that provide roaming. 1nce is the one we are normally using here.

[Susheel Nuguru]

Hi,

This is a good question ! I am not aware that any networks can be blacklisted/whitelisted.

Maybe the  spesific search optimization feature could be used for that location? 
I will create an internal ticket for investigating to see if we can support this natively in the modem. But as of now blacklisting operator in modem is not supported.

[kratenko]

I do not see how this could help. The operator we need to blacklist uses the same band as one operator that we need to support, so I do not see how setting band parameters would change anything.

[Susheel Nuguru]

This is the first time we got a request like this, 

Right now filtering in the app for this to work seems to be the only option, but as you said this is not an optimistic solution.