Roaming Report – Part 1 – Roaming with Verizon – A First!

It’s March 2024 and for the first time in 5 years (thank you Covid pandemic), I was in the US again. So far, so good, but there is one significant difference this time, at least from a technical point of view: For the first time ever, I’m roaming with Verizon!

Most travelers won’t even notice, but until recently, Verizon in the US could not be an international roaming partner for most travelers, because their 2G and 3G CDMA networks were incompatible with the majority of international networks. Even with the introduction of LTE, this did not change. This was because for GSM/UMTS/LTE/5G network operators, international roaming depended on the 2G/3G circuit switched voice core and the CS-fallback mechanism from LTE/5G to GSM or UMTS. And this is what Verizon could not offer to international operators. But finally, VoLTE roaming is on the rise and it seems my home operator has made a roaming agreement with Verizon. Agreed, most people use Internet based voice calling apps these days, including me, but VoLTE roaming support in devices and networks is still crucial for emergency calling and calls to people that don’t share the same messenger / calling app.

So here we go, one of those rare ‘firsts’! And as the title indicates, I made good use of my time in North America and had a look at a lot of other things while roaming. So stay tuned for more posts to come!

Sony WF-1000XM5 In-Ear Headset – Review

In my life there is a time before noise cancellation headsets and the time ever since, as noise cancellation has brought so much more silence, peace and concentration when I’m in noisy city, home and office environments. As my current first generation Bose in-ear noise cancellation headset I’ve had for many years are showing signs of battery fatigue and charger connector problems, it was time to look for something new. After shopping around a bit, the two contenders for my refresh where either the latest generation Bose in-ear Bluetooth headset, or the latest Sony variant. In the end, I decided to go for the Sony WF-1000XM5 and I’ve been using them for around 2 weeks now. Was it a good choice? I’m not so sure…

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Some Thoughts on the 6 GHz Band for Wi-Fi and Cellular

Back in December 2023 a number of interesting decisions were made at the World Radio Conference (WRC) in Dubai. One of the most important bands for which a number of decisions were made was the 6 GHz band. Today, spectrum in this band is already used for Wi-Fi, and it is pretty much the only remaining additional spectrum for cellular networks in the next 10 years. The decisions reached for this band make it look like all players took a big gamble.

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Internet Access on Planes in Europe – 2024 Update

In the past two months, I’ve flown form Germany to Spain twice. With a flight time of over 2 hours, it’s actually worthwhile to jump through the hoops and connect to the in-flight Internet over Wifi. I can’t quite believe it, but my last post on in-flight Internet access in Europe is already back from 2018. Yes, Covid got in the way. So let’s have a look at how the system worked for me this time around.

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Some Thoughts on 3 GHz Bands n78 and n77 – Europe and the U.S.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in North America, actually it must be close to 4 years. How time flies. Anyway, I might have the opportunity to go there again soon, so I started thinking a bit about the current spectrum situation there, particularly the 3 GHz range for 5G. Back in 2019, quite a number of countries in Europe had auctioned spectrum for 5G in 3GPP band n78 (3300 – 3800 MHz). Most network operators got additional spectrum between 80 and 100 MHz, with some network operators being even luckier and grabbing up to 150 MHz. This was massive compared to previous spectrum auctions for LTE, where channels of typically 10 or 20 MHz in lower frequency bands went on sale. In Europe, band n78 significantly pushed available capacity and network speeds, particularly in cities to previously unknown levels. So lets have a look what happened in the U.S. back then and in the meantime.

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Open Wi-Fi OWE Encryption – Part 2

In the previous post, I’ve taken a first look at how the Opportunistic Wi-Fi Encryption looks like for the user and how one can find out high level details on the shell. In short: OWE enables per device encryption in open Wi-Fi networks without the need to type in a password. In this follow up post, I’ll have a closer look at how OWE is advertised by the Access Point and then picked up by devices.

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Open Wi-Fi and Opportunistic Encryption in the Wild!

When I’m out and about I’m usually ‘bringing my own Internet’, i.e. I use my smartphone to tether my notebook and other devices. But every now and then I can’t avoid to use a hotel or other public Wi-Fi. And boy was I recently surprised when I used a hotel Wi-Fi that supported Opportunistic Wireless Encryption (OWE). I blogged about this in 2016 (!) but this is the first time I’ve actually seen it in the wild. Truth be told, I have no idea if OWE is something recent in practice or new, as I rarely use public Wi-Fi. But anyway here’s the story how I found it and how it works.

When I was recently at a hotel, I wanted to use their public Wi-Fi but found that little ‘lock’ sign next to their network name in my network list on Ubuntu 22.04. I clicked on the network anyway and started to look around in the room for a note with the password. I couldn’t find one, though, and when I looked on my notebook screen again, I noticed that I was connected to the Internet. Hm, I wondered, how could that be, there was a lock icon, so I should have been asked for a password!? A quick iwconfig revealed the following:

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