Orange and Vodka - mixing mobile networks

Orange and Vodka - mixing mobile networks

(shaken, not stirred)

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Good title for a book or article that heading. I thought this would be a useful post regarding the unusual occurrence of roaming onto a forbidden UK network from the home UK network.These screenshots record an event that happened on my wireless broadband. In the area I was located at the time Orange provided GPRS at 56K but download rates of under 6.5kbps (no 3G) - so not very good at all.
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Such a matter like this may have an influence, if understood that it may occur, on any post-obtained radio test measurements after an alleged crime, or may even taint what may be considered a flawless opinion or conclusion, that is when conducting cell site analysis (CSA) investigations for evidential purposes.

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It is not the fact that post-obtained radio test measurements failed to replicate an earlier event, it is the fact that a 'possibility' that may need to be explored to provide a more rounded opinion or conclusion in a report and at Court maybe missed or overlooked.
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There are answers to the above conundrum but this is not the point of this post, which has been to highlight a technical event that might impact on evidence.

Orange and Vodka - mixing mobile networks

Orange and Vodka - mixing mobile networks

(shaken, not stirred)

.

Good title for a book or article that heading. I thought this would be a useful post regarding the unusual occurrence of roaming onto a forbidden UK network from the home UK network.These screenshots record an event that happened on my wireless broadband. In the area I was located at the time Orange provided GPRS at 56K but download rates of under 6.5kbps (no 3G) - so not very good at all.
.

.
Such a matter like this may have an influence, if understood that it may occur, on any post-obtained radio test measurements after an alleged crime, or may even taint what may be considered a flawless opinion or conclusion, that is when conducting cell site analysis (CSA) investigations for evidential purposes.

.

.
It is not the fact that post-obtained radio test measurements failed to replicate an earlier event, it is the fact that a 'possibility' that may need to be explored to provide a more rounded opinion or conclusion in a report and at Court maybe missed or overlooked.
.
There are answers to the above conundrum but this is not the point of this post, which has been to highlight a technical event that might impact on evidence.

Humanitarian Aid or Pay As You Throw?

Humanitarian Aid or Pay As You Throw?

Vodafone's 150 design shape reminds me that this looks like a squared-edged version of the old rounded-edged Phillips Savvy (back when Virgin Mobile sold it in a box through their music chain stores) that use to be on the market. One distinction here though is that Vodi is selling the Vodafone-150 into developing countries India, Turkey and eight African countries including Lesotho, Kenya and Ghana at $15.00 (£10.00). The disclosed objective is a worthy and laudable aim that out there in the Africa countries communications relevant to voice calls, SMS, financial transfers and healthcare have more importance and relevance than touch screen functionality, games and posturing as to who has a weird app that they want to boast about.
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The spec given for this product:
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"Vodafone 150 device specification: Black candy bar device with 5-way navigation key; 1.0” monochrome graphic display 96x64 pixels; voice and SMS; GSM 900/1800; polyphonic ringtones; vibration; alarm clock; calculator; currency converter; 2 embedded games; memory for up to 100 entries in phonebook plus SMS storage; torch; battery: 500mAh (standby up to 400h, talk time up to 5h); mini USB connector."
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A truly magnificent gesture on behalf of the international community would be to allow mobile phone credits to be used to purchase food and water, medicine, etc other than only allowing it to be solely used to make a mobile calls, whilst idly sitting by watching human life being put at risk. What could there ever be the point in watching people die of starvation and dehydration?
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Imagine for each mobile phone user a maximum credit to purchase life sustaining essentials could be made available. Imagine that specialist supply waypoints (International Humanitarian Aid Points) were setup whereby the genuine user can get food/water, medicines etc, then the waypoints can check the applicants wanting the food/water, medicines are the genuine users of the phones. What a fantastic way that would be for finitely targetting humanitarian monetary aid to those in need.
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Of course, it is not unrealistic to observe that there is also a calculated risk being taken here that cheap handsets can lead to their owners using them as disposal objects, as opposed to meaningful devices. Any owner migrating as a roaming-user are unlikely to be barred from making calls because the handsets are dual band RF chipset(s) (GSM MHz900/GSM MHZ1800) so should work in any GSM network.
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Cheap handset can also make them a target for unlocking. It is not hard to imagine, cheap phones like these will not be long out of the cargo doors before they are being supplied into Europe. So this is one of the calculated risks (the other side of the coin so to speak). Such low-cost handsets (or officially "ULCH phones") are not new. We were already aware of ULCH's some years back but they have now grown in status as viable products because of the World recession. Cheap handsets are in Europe at the moment and regularly used in crime and thown away afterwards.
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How might any operator stop such ULCH phones being used for making chargeable calls where such calls are being made for the purposes of the commission of a crime? Well, the first obvious point is to include a validity integrity key (VIK) to be transmitted along with the IMEI and associate the VIK to the IMEI at manufacturing production stage. Were someone to clone the IMEI of a handset it would not be associated with the VIK and therefore the network could detect this and block the handset from making calls. Equally, if the financial credits on the phone were from Humanitarian Aid, then the network operator could equally help in stopping that credit being spent on phone calls associated with crime because of the VIK conflict with cloned IMEI and/or because the phone isn't in the geographical region to which it was expected to operate (as a humanitarian aid phone). Moreover, the idea of security VIK/IMEI could be implemented in every new handset issued and maybe able to be implemented via SMS Class 1 messages to older handsets already in the marketplace. Realistically, how long would this take to be implemented? It depends, in as simpler statement that can be made, how long it takes to implement signalling in the network to the EIR and a response from the EIR.
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I have sent this thread up to President of the United States of America, Mr Barack Obama, to the World Health Organisation, Oxfam, and to UK Government etc.

3G Dongle CSA sample measurements

3G Dongle CSA sample measurements

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Since the UK MTEB Mobile Forensics Conference 2009 is being held in Dorking, a short drive from Box Hill Point (an area of outstanding natural beauty that is situated in the National Trust Park) I thought I would go out and conduct some 3G radio test measurements. I was interested to comprehend, given the terrain and forest area, the quality and type of coverage was like along the road from Box Hill Point. I viewed the operator coverage maps for this area and found that the operators offered fringe coverage in the area.

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I recorded sample measurments for the Orange mobile network as their Mast in Dorking is approximately 3.5Km from Box Hill. The screen prints of the measurements are set out below. The sample measurements were taken over a 45-minutes period.

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Image 1:

illustrates the route driven from Dorking to Box Hill (a) to (b) and

(b) was the approximate location point for tests.

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Image 2:
illustrates the OFCOM basestation database details for the

Orange Mast (3G) at Dorking High Street dteected at Box Hill location (b)
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Image 3:
illustrates the terrain path from Dorking to Box Hill (a) to (b) and
(b) was the approximate location point for tests. Box Hill is 687-metres above sea level
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illustrates the mobile network operator, signal strength (RSSI), registration to
Circuit Switched (CS) and/or Packet Switched (PS) and which registration is
attached. Note from all the images below the variations in RSSI, the registrations
and to the network attachments
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More on Cell Site Analysis: http://cellsiteanalysis.blogspot.com

Vodafone move to standardise handset software

The Daily Mail City&Finance Page 68 (Tuesday, November 7, 2006) ran a short piece on Vodafone unveiling "plans to become the first mobile operator to standardise the software of its handsets". It is to "slash the number of operating systems it would develop applications for in the next five years". This will reduce to three, that of Microsoft Windows Mobile, Symbian/S60 and Linux.

The three choices Vodafone have made are not bad, but there is always the worry from end-users point of view that they end up with largely a fait accompli, that of limited choices dished up by an operator.

It will be interesting to see whether the handset manufacturers follow suit and downsize their operating systems to comply with Vodafone's plans

Alternatively, the likes of Nokia, Motorola, SonyEricsson, Samsung etc could create mobile 'phones with the appropriate GSM/GPRS/WCDMA/WiFi wireless operating systems on them and allow the general public to profile their handsets with the application features (download) they not only like, but actually want.