@hackaday fortunately #Germany seems.to mandate.keeping residual #2G capacity online for mandatory emergency services like #CellBroadcast and #Calling as well as #SMS.
Sadly that doesn't mean they 3 big MNOs ain't gonna invest in improving 2G availability (tho they do provide it alongside #4G / #LTE & #5G and whilst they go up against illegal signal amplifiers, they at least offer or consider offering them (tho only 4G & 5G versions!), with #O2 making it a simple, not cheap purchase of a Femtocell whereas #Vodafone seems to demand a contract on top with fees (and not just.mandatory provisions to provide access to their technicians whenever they demand it) and #DTAG / #DeutscheTelekom seems to be very reluctant to offer any remedies at all…
Personally I wished that both the 3 MNOs and @BNetzA were to encourage #Fentocells and their #installation.
After all, these things are obviously locked-down "black boxes" that tunnel everything to their network over a #VPN tunnel and it's not like a #WiFi router where people have been caught (accidentially or on purpose) misconfiguring them to use *the wrong band (s) outdoors…
And enabling at least a very vestigal and limited #2G coverage should be in the cards for them, even if that could manage only a few hundred devices and a dozen calls at the same time...
- But maybe that's me who thinks that it would be in the interest for MNOs paying literally billions for frequency allocations to increase #coverage with the least amount of fuss possible...
