MNC/MCC as string?

[Aki Niemi]

On Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:15:19 -0500, Denis Kenzior <denkenz at gmail.com>
wrote:
> It doesn't seem this clear-cut.  E.g. according to my Neo on with
T-Mobile
> US 
> SIM:
> 
> AT+COPS?
> +COPS: 0,0,"T-Mobile"
> OK
> AT+COPS=3,2
> OK
> AT+COPS?
> +COPS: 0,2,"31026"
> OK
> AT+COPS=2
> OK
> +CREG: 0
> AT+COPS=1,2,"31026"
> OK
> +CREG: 2
> +CREG: 1,"99EC","1A11"
> 
> At least according to wikipedia the real MCC/MNC of T-Mobile is 310260. 
Go
> 
> figure.

I think this might be a separate issue with some North American operators
that seem to pad also 3-digit codes, effectively dropping that trailing
zero. Perhaps this is for legacy reasons.
 
>> Nokia modems both send and receive MNC/MCC pairs as Binary Coded Decimal
>> (BCD) strings. Any 2 digit MNC is padded with 0xF. Problem is, when
>> listing
>> operators, the conversion of MNC codes from BCD to short loses this
>> information, and will result in manual network selection failing (BCD
>> '001'
>> -> short '1' -> BCD '01F' != BCD '001').
>>
>> Anyone opposed to changing the mnc and mcc code types from short to
>> string?
>>
> 
> I agree that this does seem to be an issue, so no problems in changing
> this.  
> Do you consider this an implementation issue only (e.g. APIs do not
change)
> or 
> do you want to change the NetworkOperator attributes to a string as well?


I would go ahead and change them as well. In theory, there could exist both
2- and 3-digit MNCs within a single MCC, for which having strings is the
safest option.

Cheers,
Aki