I have no affiliation with the below survey, but it struck me as something some of the folks here might be interested in. At face value it is being run by James Parker who also set up a petition to try to stop the ban being implemented, and who has been engaged with the issues around the 3G shutdown for some time.
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Hi everyone, my Fairphone 5 has stopped receiving calls/smsās after the 3G switch off yesterday. Help!
Has anyone been able to get their Fairphone to work after the 3G switch off in Australia? I was under Boost Mobile. Thanks so much, really donāt want to get a new phone if I cann avoid it!
Hi Emily, I moved your post here where all info we currently have is concentrated.
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Iām very curious to hear if anyone with a fp5 that was blocked by telstra, tries to move to voda/optus, if it works or the blocking carries over.
As i canāt get a data only sim to work, even though theirs no reason why it shouldnāt!
Iām currently waiting for my phone number to port from Telstra Wholesale to Optus, having lost network access through Exetel yesterday. Iāll report back here with the outcome.
I switched preemptively from Telstra (Belong) to Optus (Moose) a bit more than a month ago; I was never blocked, but I did stop receiving the SMS warnings and the 3G checker started reporting that my FP5 would be functional, once the database updated.
Not sure if that helps, but itās got to be cheaper and easier to move to a new provider to test it out than to change phones, I guess!
Hey folks,
Just wanted to share my experience in the interests of helping you fine people.
Fairphone 5, previously with Boost (Telstra). As an aside, was told by them that the phone would be fine when I called them months ago and they had the gall to blame me yesterday that I didnāt change the handset but thatās just me venting.
After having a brick post 3G shutdown and seeing this thread I hopped into Optus. They told me that they could not guarantee it would work but they have a free 7 day trial so I signed up to that with an esim in the 2nd phone sim slot.
After waiting the max of 4hrs for it to be activated I still did not have a service unfortunately BUT I decided to try removing the physical Boost Sim and bingo, functional phone.
So tldr, confirming that Optus works (at least for now), just make sure you dont have a Telstra Sim in sniffing distance.
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Hi All et @kbux
Iāve I had a very similar experience with Telstra. Iām logging a complaint to the TIO.
https://www.tio.com.au/
Basically explaining the following.
I was told from Telstra in March to update my phone to a 4G phone. So Iām June I purchased and July I had my new 4G and 5G phone with VoLTE capabilities. Which Telstra now wonāt allow on their network.
After using my new device I think in August, still receiving a prompt before every call saying I āmayā not be able to make an emergency call and to contact Telstra. Which I did and was told it should work, donāt worry itās a default message.
I called up again to confirm my phone has compatible band widths and VoLTE. Which I was told again by Telstra staff member it should work.
Then on the Friday afternoon 25th of Oct I was informed my phone would be blocked. So as I couldnāt call after work hours, I called Telstra on the weekend, told me they couldnāt really do anything and someone would call me on Monday, received no call back the follow morning. Then got cut off roughly at 10:00am.
Telstra is a fault here.
I have also sent and email to the ABC about this situation and how it has effected other people too.
I do wonder if bring a class action against them is worth pursuing, given the number of people effected by this. At the end of the day Telstra wasnāt clear with their term āupgradeā and mislead people, whom are now out of pocket.
Iām will be writing to my local member.
I would encourage other to do any or all of these things.
Iām not sure the TIO will have much luck with getting Telstra to open there network to overseas phone like Optus has but who know the more complaints they getā¦ fingers crossed.
What @IainM post is worth reading, James Parker has been very actively trying to get the word out.
I reached out to the AMTA last night. It was our gov that mandated international mobiles where itās not known if the support 000 be blocked. AMTA replied promptly and said fairphone can contact them to confirm compatibility and could be whitelisted. I supplied this in the support case I logged.
Telstra were as much use as a chocolate teapot. Boost also. Just kept telling me to buy a new device when my device is under a year old.
The whole thing has been poorly handled. There has been years of planning. What a mess. Thank god I still had my old phone and it still works.
How the logic, my phone was working on 4 and 5g and they block it. So not only cannot I not make 000 calls, I couldnāt call anyone or access data even.
Letās see what happened next. I did try my friends Optus Sim and that seemed to work. Letās see if that continues to be the case.
Karen
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Telstra could do something about but, it requires them to reach out to Fair phone, but it is in there best interest not to. They claim to make $80 million in sales because of this situation.
Agreed support just kept telling me to buy a new phone. No thanks I have a perfectly good one which I made as a ethical and environmental choice.
They could have told me where to raise the complaint / issue but they did not. I found it myself lol.
Fingers crossed it gets sorted otherwise it seems like opus may be the go. Iāll continue to try my friends sum which was still working with my fp.
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Iām not sure how Telstra reaching out to Fairphone will achieve anything.
Even if it gets FP5 āunblockedā (which I donāt think it can) we would still be unable to make calls and SMS on Telstra once 3G shuts down, because Fairphone havenāt included Telstraās network settings on the device.
Thatās not something Telstra can fix - theyāve registered those settings in an international database where every phone maker in the world can just download them and use them for free, but Fairphone have chosen not to due to their Europe-only marketing and support strategy.
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I can report my FP5 is back up and running happily on the Optus network (Optus prepaid for the short term while I sort out my next preferred supplier) having ported from Exetel.
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Oh, I understand now. Seems like their is no point trying to pursue Telstra, short of getting 3G re-instated, which really would mean convincing the government to chance the legislation.
Log a case with fairphone at least to request it! I have asked the to contact the AMTA.
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My support call with Telstra chat lasted over 2.5 hours, and across 2 support people, and I eventually got a link out of them to raise a complaint, but I needed to sign in on my Telstra app (even via the web), and given the phone had been disconnected, that was a no go. Unfortunately the link is on my work laptop, but I can post it tomorrow.
I can confirm that having a telstra sim in your phone even as the second sim will stop a vodafone sim from connecting. Remove it and suddenly vodafone connects!
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Is there a sense of how difficult it would be for Fairphone to add the required firm/software for their phones to be 100% compatible with Australian providers (in the absence of official support, of course)?
Like, is it basically a few lines of code somewhere, or something quite elaborate? Iām sure Australian users would understand having zero official support.
I donāt know with certainty, but from everything Iāve seen itās quite simple. AFAIK they just need to add a downloaded mbn file into the appropriate location in the firmware build and package it up in the next OTA update. Android takes care of the rest with no code change.
For other makes of phone, someone with the appropriate tools and skill can actually do it to their own phone, without even rooting their device (if that means anything to you). This is likely the case for FP5 too. But that wonāt get you unblocked.
The bigger hurdle is what promises Fairphone are willing to make to Australian telcos, and what the telcos will accept. Normally telcos will want to rely on a statement of compliance which states (among other things) that emergency calling has actually been tested with a SIM from each provider, and over each network technology (3G/4G/5G/VoWifi etc). Getting that testing done properly requires a controlled lab where they can isolate signals from each different technology, and associated $$$. But itās a requirement to sell the phone in Australia so for mainstream phones it has all been done. If Telstra wants that, Fairphone wonāt be able to provide it.
I donāt know for sure, but based on limited info about what the telcos have been up to, I suspect the reason FP5 has remained unblocked on Optus/Voda is because Fairphone has provided qualified advice saying their phones are theoretically compliant with the technical standards required but are untested, and that the telcos have relied on 000 call logs over the last couple of years as their ātest dataā to show that FP5 does indeed do emergency calls over VoLTE from Optus/Voda home networks and via emergency camp-on to other networks when home network reception is unavailable. Credit where itās due (assuming Iām right about what theyāve done) - Iām grateful that the networks put that effort into that analysis rather than relying solely on a statement of compliance from Fairphone that would never have come. That work would have been led by Telstra as the operators of the emergency call answering service.
But it leaves us in a pickle now. FP5 is blocked from Telstra, so thereās no way to generate new call log data to show it works once a fix is applied. And I donāt see Fairphone paying for testing to provide confident assurance to Telstra so theyāll unblock it.
Weād have to cross our fingers that Telstra would accept a āwe think weāve fixed itā response from Fairphone, which would be sticking their neck out pretty far given how firm ACMA and the Minister have been on these requirements and how unflinching theyāve been to advice from telcos about how to make them more practical and consumer-friendly.
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Hello all,
I am apparently one of only a few FP4 users in Australia going by the posts on this topic.
I can confirm that my FP4 does no have any of the FP3+/FP5 issues with the Telstra network.
I am on Aldi mobile. The 3498 check came back positive a while back when I read about the issue and my FP4 is still connecting to data and all other mobile services since the shutdown started.
I am wondering what is different between the FP4 and FP5 since they should be treated 100% the same.
The only other thing I can think of is that I have a European eSIM which registers on the Optus network by default, but that one has mobile data turned off so it shouldnāt impact how the phone connects to Telstra/Aldi.
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