Sierra Wireless 77XX Info

[Azrial]

Nice job!

Does Telus know that this is not a 'tablet."

There is a slight misdirection needed when this card is used with T-Mo...

[kode-niner]

I just took the Koodo SIM out of my phone to test it. It works well but I won't be using it with them and I'm not sure what is their official policy regarding tablets. Videotron, however is another matter. They don't care what device I use it in and the guys at the kiosk were quite amused when I plonked down my CF-19 on their counter years ago to test out their 3G SIM. In general, if carriers have a data plan for USB 3G/LTE modems (or "sticks" as they like to call them) to plug into your PC, they should be amenable to people using that same plan with internal modems like ours and have a way to opt out of buying/renting the stick.

So I head back to the Videotron kiosk at the shopping center this Monday to exchange my 3G SIM for a LTE enabled one. This time I had the massive CF-30 smack the counter, removed the old SIM and slapped in the new one for free and I was out of there in 5 minutes. Now it registers properly and recognizes the LTE home network. However there seems to be a problem connecting after authentication that I can't figure out. I chatted with a support rep online to see if the APN remains the same and if there was anything else I needed to change and he assured me that the PPP side of the connection handshakes don't change between 3G and LTE connections, and that I should continue doing what I was doing before.

So I put back my trusty Huawei in it for now and will put the MC7700 in my spare CF-19 for future testing.

[kode-niner]

I finally figured out the Videotron problem. It really was the wrong APN.

It took a bit of black-belt googling to understand this one. To enable Network-Manager debug logging I found this command:

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dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.NetworkManager /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.SetLogging string:"debug" string:""

More useful info shows up in the syslog. In my case this is what caught my eye:

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gsm-wcdma-option-unsubscribed

That led me to someone mentioning this being a generic bad APN error. I decided to try Videotron online support again but in French this time, and get a second opinion. It payed off. The guy told me that ihvm.videotron is the APN for 3G/AWS mobile internet. LTE uses ihvm.ng.

Now I'm no longer looking back! I'm sticking with LTE this time.

[kode-niner]

[kode-niner]

I just got another MC7700 and this one throws up a
multiple-connection-to-same-pdn-not-allowed
and refuses to connect at all.

Not sure what to make of it yet.

Now comparing outputs of AT&V between the working and non-working unit and trying to make sense of it all.

[kode-niner]

I finally figured it out. A PDN as I understand it simply means Public Data Network, so I struggled to figure out why the heck would the MC7700 attempt to connect to more than one service at the same time.

It turns out it had Virgin Mobile Canada settings stored in a profile that probably tried to send APN connection settings at the same time I was trying to connect to Videotron, hence the multiple PDN error.

Exhibit A:

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AT+CGDCONT?

+CGDCONT:1,"IP","inet.bell.ca","0,0,0,0",0,0

Yeah, that's the Virgin Mobile APN. How the heck did I manage to order this "new" MC7700 from China and get one that was previously used in Canada of all places? Anyway I flushed the profile since my connection manager takes care of sending the APN and the bloody thing finally works. I guess, in a way, defining a profile is a way to lock it and make it easier for connection software to connect with minimal configuration.