[phone] Sim toolkit is not available on UT

[taiebot65]

E.g. of SIm toolkit is http://support.vodafone.com.au/articles/FAQ/SIM-Toolkit

While a lot of those addons are completely crap and useless, the SIm toolkit is sometimes used by some phone provider to set your sim card to roaming mode when you are abroad which makes it a must have.

For the moment i need to borrow a second phone put my sim card in it, go to the Sim-toolkit, enable my sim card for roaming and put the sim card back in my UT to get my phone working while i am abroad. I need to do the same when i go back home.

[Tony Espy (awe)]

SIM Toolkit is available in the current version of ofono, however it's not currently enabled by our ril device plugin ( which is the base plugin which handles all RIL-based devices ). Enabling is easy.

The real work to enable SIM toolkit on Touch devices is integrating the SIM Toolkit with the Touch UI framework. As the ofono DBus API will be restricted on Touch platforms via AppArmor, only a white-list of approved system/session processes will be allowed to interact with ofono directly. This means that the support for SIM Toolkit would need to be added to Unity in order to properly respond to SIM toolkit UI operations.

[taiebot65 (dedreuil)]

I think this will be covered by phone app https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PhoneApp

[taiebot65 (dedreuil)]

Hey i have seen on r133 that those services should be available but nothing appears when i click on my phone services

[Tony Espy (awe)]

@taiebot65

AFAIK, there are still no plans to implement the generic SIM Toolkit for Ubuntu Phone.

As for SIM service numbers, please refer to bug #1337189.

SIM Services it landed in the past week. I've verified the UI is present in image #u132. Go the bottom of the main Settings page, and you'll see a "System" category, then tap "Phone" which will then show a page with "<Operator Name> Services". If you're SIM has service numbers programmed, then this page will show them. Note, you can also verify whether or not your SIM has service numbers available by running /usr/share/ofono/scripts/list-modems.

[Martti Piirainen (piiramar)]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ofono/+bug/1323837

Just for clarification, this bug is about the SIM Application Toolkit as specified in [1]. It is a rather complex family of features, one of which is the service menu as specified in [2]. As Tony wrote, not related to the service dialling numbers in bug 1337189.

[1] 3GPP TS 31.111 "Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM) Application Toolkit (USAT)"
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PhoneApp#SIM_services

[taiebot65 (dedreuil)]

As talked with Tony.
 I want to reiterate that using my carrier when i go abroad my phone becomes useless as i need to enable a roaming mode via the sim toolkit and then i can connect to the gsm network.
I do not know how many carriers follow this principle of roaming allowance via sim toolkit.
This is the status i get for my operator ./list-operator
[ /ril_0/operator/23430 ]
        MobileCountryCode = 234
        Status = forbidden
        MobileNetworkCode = 30
        Name = Vectone
        Technologies = gsm

[Jussi Kangas (jkangas)]

There was some discussion if we could hack our way around this using some test script or something.

I'm afraid it is not possible to send SAT command to SIM from ofono without overall working SAT support in phone. I'm not familiar with roaming enabling feature described but I've been doing lot ot SAT. I suspect that when it works it works most likely like this:

- At startup modem tells to SIM card that it supports set up menu by sending terminal profile to card.
- Card sends set up menu SAT command to the phone which triggers the drawing of the operator menu to UI.
- User selects request that enables the roaming. Based on selection phone triggers menu selection SAT command to card.

Now, I can only guess what card does at this point: Normally I would say that most likely card orders the phone to send sms to the operator using send sms SAT command. (Send USSD would not work, because it is apparently aimed to work in a roaming network.) Then the operator would send update request to the card via SMS PP Data Download or some other update mechanism which would enable feature user is requesting. However, since the network listing shows that phone is forbidden from the roaming network phone should not be able to send message. I think only thing that can happen is that menu selection directly updates some value in the card.

I don't know if the Krillin is giving the terminal profile to the card. (Mako does, I've seen the SAT messages in traces). If the phone does not give the terminal profile to the card, there is nothing we can do. Card won't sent the setup menu command and it will ignore menu selection command we would send. At the moment ubuntu-touch ofono does not support the forwarding the command to client but if it would, we could capture the set up menu request with test-stk-menu test script and send menu selection request from there.

[taiebot65 (dedreuil)]

Anyway we can raise this bug priority.

It is still as a wishlist but i do not think UT cannot do without a SIm toolkit.

[taiebot65 (dedreuil)]

A little explanation about how is being used the sim toolkit in the african market
 http://blog.nyaruka.com/androids-achilles-heal-the-sim-toolkit

[Lorn Potter (lorn-potter)]

In my experience, a working sim toolkit is a requirement of some operators.

[taiebot65 (dedreuil)]

Meego seems to have an app to deal with the Stk my knowledge are very limited in this.
I am actually abroad and will not have a working phone for two weeks because oif this problem.

https://gitorious.org/meego-ux/meego-app-satk/source/6296ebb569697c5a80ee6b518ccf8c331d7cb840:doc/sim_toolkit_design_draft.txt#L61

[taiebot65 (dedreuil)]

up on this bug.

I have been in holidays abroad again and could not get any network connection.

[Phil Weir (phil-weir)]

Use case: As an NI cross-border worker, this seems to be the reason I have no access at all with Andrews & Arnold in Ireland, only when I re-enter the UK in the evenings. Unfortunately, this means I have had to switch to primarily using an O2 UK number and keeping it topped up, to make sure I'm not out of touch for 9h per day, which defeats the purpose of paying an A&A subscription. As far as I can tell, this bug is the only obstacle to being able to switch back fully to A&A, which was working fine on my previous Android handset (when roaming was controlled through the SIM services menu).

[AEvar (aevar-e)]

Sim-toolkit is also used by BankID in Norway.
There is no way I can use the phone as a daily driver without this since it is used to access my bank and many other services.
I want to add that this is supported by all other smartphone OSs, Firefox OS even. This should be a requirement.

[Charles Opondo (charlesopondo)]

I, perhaps selfishly, agree with the others that this should be assigned a higher priority than 'wishlist. A lot of service providers offer additional SIM functionality through STK. My provider, Safaricom, offers a mobile banking service, MPesa, which is actually the chief reason I use their service. Without it I cannot use my Ubuntu phone as my daily device (it just sits on my nightstand).

[Jonas G. Drange (jonas-drange)]

Assigning UX since there are multiple options: dedicated app, under “Cellular” in System Settings, etc.

[Simon Fels (morphis)]

Some code we can base our work on is in https://github.com/meego-tablet-ux/meego-app-satk

However we need to be able to process requests from STK in the background to push notifications or other requests. We maybe can put in a small plugin into ofono which triggers this when the STK agent should be triggered but is suspended or not available.

As a further note: I talked with Tony (awe) a week ago and he said from the ofono side there should be nothing left to do for STK support. @Tony: Can you confirm that?

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

No commitment to work on this, email thread discussed how community might be able to take it forward

[Alexander Nilsen (alex-nilsen)]

Is there any way to use sim toolkit functionality from terminal?

[Alfonso Sanchez-Beato (alfonsosanchezbeato)]

@alex-nilsen, no, as currently ofono has no implementation for the stk atom for ril modems.

[marius hergel (mariushergel)]

Important that this will be fixed for Norwegian users, as it is used by Bankid on mobile.
https://www.dnb.no/en/personal/internet-banking-mobile-and-card/internet-banking/bankid-on-your-mobile.html
https://www.bankid.no/en/private/areas-of-use/

[Alien911 (alien911-8)]

is there any way to get this to work, som workaround? this is the one ting that makes Ubuntu phone usless as my main phone.

[taiebot65 (dedreuil)]

By reporting it to bq or meizu. I have not purchased a supported phone but if I had I would have highlighted this.