The Miserable State of Modems and MNOs

Golioth recently received a number of customer reports regarding connectivity issues on a specific vendor’s cellular chipset series. We immediately contacted the vendor and began working towards reproducing and isolating the behavior. What ensued was a lengthy investigation that ultimately revealed some unexpected and highly undesirable behavior. This is a story of the complexities of cellular connectivity, the perils of closed ecosystems, and how to debug what you cannot see.

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The root of the problem is that, even though we have performed a thorough investigation, tested extensively, and communicated with vendors about the issue, we are still guessing because the modem firmware is closed source and the mobile network operator (MNO) infrastructure is opaque.

A Call for Change

You may say this is the way it has always been, or that if you want something to change you better be ready to hire a small army of lawyers. We prefer a more optimistic, though perhaps naive, outlook.

The reality is that the most effective way to inspire change in a commercial context is to appeal to a major player’s self-interest.

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