Canadian Android Carrier Forcing Firmware Update

Wolfier writes "For wireless carrier Rogers in Canada, it seems that 'Customer Safety' only becomes a concern after months of neglect. Rogers is the only GSM carrier in Canada and so the only choice for Android users. Months ago, a customer called Rogers to report a firmware bug that was preventing users from making 911 calls under certain circumstances, and informed the carrier that Google had fixed the bug (recording of that call). But Rogers is only doing something about it now — namely, cutting data access of paying customers until they accept a mandatory firmware upgrade that not only fixes the 911 problem, but also contains 'extra' features that prevent users from ever gaining root access to their phones — even non-subsidized ones. And some phones are also getting bricked by this 'official' update. The moral: we really need to open up the competition here up North."

Comments

GSM Providers

[Denis Lemire]

Rogers is no longer the only GSM carrier. At the end of '09 Telus and Bell launched their own GSM networks. So counting Fido (owned by Rogers) there are now four Canadian GSM based carriers.

Re:GSM Providers

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong.

Bellus deployed their HSPDA network for 3G, which works across all 3G enabled phones. They still each maintain a CDMA network for regular service.

I couldn't take a Bell or Telus Blackberry and expect to use it on Rogers unless I used their HSPDA network.

Re:GSM Providers

[Nermal6693]

A GSM-only phone will not work on Telus/Bell. The new network is WCDMA/UMTS-based and does not have a 2G GSM component.

Re:GSM Providers

[Adambomb]

Note: The networks you're mentioning from Telus and Bell are UMTS only, with no 2G GSM support at all. Won't matter in 5-10 years, but just a heads up.

The problem people don't really seem to get about mobile pricing and "competition" in Canada is that it really is a system with only two sides Rogers and Telus/Bell. Telus and Bell themselves barely compete as their pricing structures are nearly identical beyond minor differences, which makes sense given their Network Sharing Agreements.

Fido is effectively the WestJet of our carriers, cherry picking the majority of their clients within high population density areas, which did make them a competitor within the major cities and a large portion of the market until about 2004 when they became wholly owned by Rogers.

Some people may mentioned the MVNO's Koodo and SOLO Mobile not realizing that Koodo is effectively a slightly lower margin Telus, and Solo Mobile is Bell (down to the same exact 'customer service' tools, except I believe Solo CSSR's are primarily through Canadian based subcontractors only).

Given these details, you see we have effectively two sides only. Two sides which somehow magically conviced everyone in the country that it makes sense for them to have doubled the price (two-sided billing) of per usage SMS's from 15c to 30c a piece. Two sides that maintain suspiciously close pricing that tends to vary only by small amounts for specific cases. Two sides that maintain a consistent CHURN back and forth between the two sets of groups generating Long Term Contract Charges and a variety of fine print charges so that when One is considered the evil, users switch to the other (with similar THEY ARE THE WORST rants concerning the business model in either case, rogers OR bell). The only reason it works is that the worst things only happen to a low enough percentage for each carrier that after they ragequit and go to the other side, its unlikely for it to happen again to the same person (post 90 day billing errors that are considered valid so long as client wasnt able to ask the right question to a CSSR before the 90 days was up thanks to the Consumer Protection Act [HAH], defective merchandise that is considered not covered under warranty but still generated a contract with a valid LTCC charge if cancelled [*cough*AUDIOVOX*cough*], etc).

The long and short of it is Telco companies have us by the short hairs up here in Canada. Heres hoping WIND Mobile takes off, but given that they only launched in friggan December, i cant have an opinion quite yet.

Rogers is terrible

[Merritt.kr]

I run CyanogenMod on my Rogers HTC Dream, and it has apparently had the fix for this issue for 5+ months. Yet I am still cut off from data access, they keep insisting I install their update.

Re:Rogers is terrible

[Anonymous Coward]

I callled them, said I had installed the update. They asked me to verify the build number, which I read back to the guy from the screenshot in the update documentation, and they turned my data back on. The hardest part was the time spent on hold.

Re:Uhm, I thought it was open?

[MorderVonAllem]

According to the summary they're not remote updating but cutting off access if you don't update the firmware - a bit different. Though I didn't RTFA as it's just a forum...

Re:Uhm, I thought it was open?

[BitZtream]

Yea, I'm a douche, I didn't even read the entire summary apparently.

Read a full background here

[litui]

I've documented everything I've collected on the issue here: http://www.litui.net/archives/796

More detailed and ordered than the OP's links.

Re:How ironic

[dubbreak]

Is there anything Rogers gets right? Or are they currently the most abusive monopoly Canucks have to live with?

While I agree rogers sucks, they aren't a monopoly. Canada does have a problem with cell providers though. There has to be collusion between the cell companies, that's the only explanation for the ridiculous rates canadians have to put up with. I've had a cell phone since '98 and comparable plans have not gotten cheaper since then. I've been on all the major canadian carriers as well and while coverage is acceptable now it still sucks. Best coverage and cost I ever had was in Vancouver with Fido before they were bought out by Rogers.

"High speed" internet is the same thing. It costs the same as I was paying in the 90's and I had better bandwidth then (no upload speed caps, much more consistent DL speeds). If I want higher upload rates I now have to pay a premium for them to up the cap. Awesome.

Contract breaking?

[tlhIngan]

Considering that Rogers isn't giving you data service anymore, a service that you pay for, could this be used as a way to break out of the contract?

After all, they refuse to provide the data service, they're not holding up their end of the deal, and you're paying for a service you cannot use.

Hell, at least call them and demand a credit for service not provided. Or move the SIM card to an iPhone and demand they activate the data service.

It's not like the data comes with the plan - you're free to buy any voice plan with a data plan.

Re:Contract breaking?

[Trepidity]

That's not very useful advice, considering that the cost of a lawyer will probably be more than the cost of EITHER just paying the remaining contract, OR breaking it and paying some sort of penalty. So consulting a lawyer is the worst possible option, worse than asking on Slashdot and taking the resulting advice, even if it turns out to be wrong.

Word #5

[michaelmalak]

It wasn't until the fifth word that I realized the U.S. wasn't under attack.

On top of all that...

[CraigoFL]

The user-applied fix isn't available for Mac or Windows 7 users. Those users are required to call into the Rogers tech support line to get the fix.

I did that, and had to wait on hold for over 30 minutes while the phone support waded through the (expected) deluge of calls. When I got through, I was told that I could either:

• Go to a Rogers store to get the fix
• Have a micro-SD card shipped to me (3-5 biz days wait) that contained a fix. (I don't know why they couldn't offer the fix for download).

I stopped in the Rogers store to get the fix. I waited for about 20 minutes while the customer support people (calling them "techs" wouldn't be accurate) installed the fix software on their in-store computers. Then I was told that the fix would wipe my phone. Did I have a backup? I said no; I haven't been able to find any evidence of Rogers-capable phone-sync software that works on my Mac (it's all Windows only). The store person offered to make a backup there, but after doing so he said that it only backed up my contacts, not my apps or settings (IMO the important parts). I walked out hoping that the SD solution will be better, but at best, I'm locked out of my wireless Internet service for 3-5 days.

It's hard to imagine how Rogers could have made this process worse.

Some phones are more open than Android

[MobyTurbo]

I thought the one of the battle cries that Android fanboys wave at the iPhone fanboys was that it was open and you weren't locked into running what the provider wanted, you had root on your own device and they can't take it away ... Turns out they can force remote updates and lockout root?

By comparison, Palm not only has root available on all their WebOS phones, it is provided by Palm's SDK itself and not by an unsupported hack that can be closed later at the carrier's or device maker's discretion. CEO Jon Rubenstein has even publicly praised the Homebrew community, who's efforts are encouraged, and they've promised not to close developer mode.

Maemo, from Nokia (N900, Nokia Internet Tablets) is even more open in a way; not only you have root, you have essentially a little Linux computer with all that implies; this is due to it's UMPC heritage, it originally wasn't really a smartphone OS. (Though it's a little easier to hack the apps for WebOS with "patches" because they're just JS/HTML5 text files, except the new native apps. :) )

Really, although Android has Linux, among the Linux-based phone OSs, it is probably the most closed.

Re:Happened to my wife...

[smash]

Well, if the design of the device allows itself to brick due to a failed download, then perhaps HTC or google SHOULD wear the cost. Totally different issue to requiring the firmware update - your issue is that the android update process on your HTC phone is broken.

I didn't update and I have internet

[Anonymous Coward]

I received text messages last week warning of the cutoff and forced update.

I called Saturday afternoon and politely asked the CSR if I'd receive any consideration for running an unaffected 1.6 ROM and have made a few 911 calls. Apparently the guy made a note. I asked for his name and ID number and hung up. Next day neither of the phones had internet, so I called up and sang the same song to the this CSR; he insisted that I had to update, I explained that I'm not affected and being asked to install an earlier revision of the ROM is hardly an update. He said all he could do is "reset the phone" when we hung up. He asked me to restart my phone when we hung up and when I did, my 3G signal was back and has been back since.

I've been getting texts to update, though.

Re:Uhm, I thought it was open?

[Heretic2]

You just have to fake your Android version to appear to be the version they're looking for. If you look through the forum threads linked in the story the exact method is there. I will put it here for convenience:

adb shell reboot recovery
***Wait for Magic to boot into recovery***
adb shell mount -a
adb shell
cd system
ls
***look for your build file, will be build.prop or build.sapphire.prop most likely***
CTRL-D ***to quit the shell***
adb pull /system/build.prop ***or whatever it was called***
***make a backup copy and edit the file***
adb push build.prop /system/build.prop
adb shell reboot

The actual changes you need to make to the file are:

ro.build.description=3.05.631.7 CL#118917 release-keys
ro.build.changelist=118917
ro.product.ua=
ro.build.fingerprint=rogers/htc_magic/sapphire/sapphire:1.5/CUPCAKE/118917:user/release-keys
ro.build.display.id=DRC92 3.05.631.7

Once you reboot your Magic, you should see the changes in Settings->About Phone under "Build Number".

Call into Rogers and get then to reset your network and you should be good.

Re:They do

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone 3G is not a GSM-only phone. It is a GSM/UMTS phone.

I stand corrected

[Wolfier]

Thanks for letting me know Rogers is no longer the GSM monopoly here. Here is some more background information and more of my opinions below.

The bug was, when GPS is turned on, calls to 911 can crash the phone. This bug was fixed in Android 1.6 and subsequent releases, which came out months ago. However, Rogers stated that there'd be no 1.6 updates to their customers (contrary to what Magic users in other countries can do).

Data for all Dream/Magic users went down on Sunday, and will remain down until the update is applied. The reason for data shut down is that, apart from shutting down GPS, which a carrier cannot do remotely, shutting down data is also a work-around for the 911 call issue - so, this way it's guaranteed that 911 calls will always succeed from the moment they activated the block, thus, covering their ass from potential lawsuits.

What's on the update:
1. The 911/GPS crash fix in the main firmware.
2. HTC's new Sense UI made for 1.5.
3. New radio firmware
4. New bootloader firmware

#1 is the only necessary part to fix the 911 issue. #2 is of dubious usefulness to users, especially if it requires a full backup, that Rogers claimed can be done with "3rd party software" - but the software that can fully back the phone up are all root-user-only. How ironic.

#3 and #4 are out of pure user control so customers can no longer unlock or root or run custom firmware. I have no complaint if it's for subsidised phones. However, unsubsidised phones (i.e. those we have paid a full price to buy) are also forced to update, even for people who run custom firmware that *already* has the 911 issue fixed.

So we're given 2 carrots (911 fix and Sense UI) and 2 big sticks (useless control freak firmware updates).

My opinion is, they could have rolled out a fix sooner - if a lone hacker can do it in his spare time, I'm sure a major wireless carrier can do it - the sooner the better, because there are people whose life might be at risk.

Instead, Rogers probably spent a lot of time testing the unnecessary parts of the fix (Radio firmware and Bootloader), and also testing their totally useless "add-ons" (branding, partner bookmarks, unremovable links to Rogers Shop, "Ringback", Ringtone purchases, etc.) - without wasting time testing these unnecessary parts that provide negative values to their customers, especially those using unsubsidised phones, I imagine they could have rolled out the fix sooner - even for only ONE day, and putting less of our lives in danger. In my opinion, it's putting profits higher than customer safety.

They say they cannot support rooted phones, but people are not asking for support. They're only asking to get the service they have paid for - "service" meaning usable bandwidth. Somehow these carriers or some backwards-thinking PHB inside still think they can provide something more than bandwidth, and forcing these extra "services" to unsubsidised phones somehow seem to have a priority even when customer safety is at stake.

More discussion on the Android E911 bug

[scdeimos]

There's more info and discussion over here regarding the Android 1.5 firmware and the E911 bug...

Rogers HTC E911 GPS Bug Update

Re:Uhm, I thought it was open?

[BitZtream]

The people who aren't going to be capable of doing this are the exact same group of people that DON'T GIVE A SHIT that they don't have root or that they update their firmware.

Get some perspective

Re:How ironic

[Aceticon]

My experience too.

I live in Europe (UK at the moment) and took my (unlocked) GSM phone to Canada when I went on vacations there. Since I was going to be there for almost a month, I bought a SIM card from Rogers to use in Canada and avoid roaming costs.

My experience:
- A Pay-As-You-Ggo (i.e. no contract) SIM is ridiculously expensive (C$50 with no included minutes). For comparisson sake, £35 (about C$60) in the UK with no contract gets me a SIM card, a mobile network dongle (really!) and includes £15 in credit (and the UK is hardly the cheapest mobile phone market in Europe, in Holland I got a SIM card for 5 EUR).
- In Canada you pay to receive calls (wtf!)
- Top-ups expire after a while: in other words, you load money into the phone and if you don't use it before a set deadline date then Rogers just takes it away.
- Making calls does cost about 2/3 of what it costs in the UK. Again, please note that the UK is far from the cheapest mobile market in Europe.
- Checking your voicemail is free in the UK but costs money with Rogers in Canada.

To top it all up, they assigned me a mobile number which was re-used from somebody else and came subscribed to some "pay-to-receive one SMS joke a day" scam - this required a call to Rogers support where they first tried to deny all responsability and finally relented and repayed the money taken from my account only after I got angry, mentioned that number re-use was not my choice - their problem not mine - and mentioned something about "deceitfull sales practices" and that maybe it should be escalated to the local regulatory entities. I had to demand a block be put on all SMSs to that number to avoid further such issues.

All in all I'm happy this was only for a month and I don't see how you Canadians take it.