With the recent shutdown of the 3G network and subsequent blocking of phones deemed unable to call 000 there has been a class of 4G users completely missed by the ACMA directive.
Many homes and apartment buildings in Australia use 4G access control intercoms. They use VoLTE for call and some of them also access internet for IP calls.
These devices are designed to access 3G first for calls and then 4G. This has been no problem on Vodafone and resellers networks as 3G was turned off earlier in the year.
These devices are telephones but they don't make 000 calls. They work by having a database of phone numbers that are called when a button is pressed or an apartment number entered on a keypad. There is no way to call a phone number using the keypad so 000 cannot be called.
It seems many of these devices have been caught up in the "banning" of devices because the ACMA didn't foresee that this could happen when the networks were allowed to police this any way they knew how (basically sell a new phone).
We supply and support several different models of these intercoms and it has been a difficult time. With one particular model which makes phone calls and IP video calls we have had the following:
On Telstra we saw issues as the 3G network was reduced where the devices could not access 3G channels when needed so calls not made. Telstra also reduced the signal level for 4G in the area which basically killed them as an option.
We switched to Vodafone and it worked wll for 2 weeks. Good signal, voice calls worked well, video calls over the internet fast and worked well - until this week. First one intercom was dropped from mobile broadband and then the second one - these are in Fortitude Valley in Brisbane.
A check of the devices found they could make voice calls but could not get an IP address from live.vodafone.com. Vodafone wiped their hands saying they did not sell the devices so could not provide support. A replacement with an Aldi SIM quickly showed the devices were operational (except for low signal) and when the SIM was inserted into a phone the internet worked fine. Not a Vodafone account issue but for some reason they stopped giving IP addresses to allow internet access.
So why am I talking about Vodafone and Telstra on a TPG forum? I want to know if TPG run their own internet infrastructure or will a TPG SIM have the same issue as a Vodafone SIM in these intercoms?
