FreeCalypso still alive in 2022

[Mychaela Falconia]

Hi DS,

> My main concern was that
> if you were to use eg. T-Mobile's 310-160, then other GSM phones
> with a T-Mobile issued SIM card would be at risk of inadvertently being
> connected, for example someone driving by.

Unless you or someone else on this list can present a strong argument
for a different choice, I currently plan on using 310-222 as my made-up
PLMN code - the important point is that the last digit of the 3-digit
MNC is not 0.  All of those legacy codes like 310-160, 310-220 etc have
zero as their last digit; none of those MNCs are used any more (there
is only 310-260 for T-Mobile and 310-410 for AT&T, with the latter
having no GSM cells, only LTE crap), but I have no desire to
misrepresent my Themyscira Wireless operation as an old, no-longer-used
T-Mobile PLMN - hence I am picking a 3-digit MNC with a non-zero last
digit, which has never been assigned to anyone.

How did I come up with 310-222 as opposed to some other code?  A long
while ago, before the scamdemic, I was thinking of 310-666, just to
poke fun at silly religions - but in the new reality we live in, my
new friends are the pureblood community (those who have NOT taken
poison injections), and most of them are conservative Christians -
hence I changed my mind to using 310-222 instead of 666, to avoid
giving them the wrong impression.

Our FCSIM1 cards do have EF.PNN and EF.OPL, and I have these lines in
my fc-simtool programming script:

pnn-write 1 Themyscira
opl-write 1 310-222 0000 FFFE 1
opl-erase 2 end

With this programming, phones with Themyscira SIM cards inserted into
them and connected to our Themyscira GSM cell should actually show
"Themyscira" on the display - but some really old firmwares (I suspect
Pirelli's fw may be one of those) ignore PNN/OPL from the SIM, hence
those will display "310 222".

> The risk would be much lower
> with a test PLMN; since it is not their HPLMN, passers-by's phones
> would have no reason to attach.

How would the situation be any worse with 310-222?  This code will
never be anyone's HPLMN nor will it appear in anyone's PLMNsel, as it
is officially a "does not exist" code, thus I don't see why any
passerby phone would try attaching.

Also needless to say, I will configure my network to reject any
registrations from IMSIs other than our own - I am NOT copying
Rhizomatica's way of running with alien SIMs.

> Also, I would recommend looking at
> the available spectrum with osmocom_fft plus an SDR such as:
> https://www.nooelec.com/store/nesdr-smart-xtr-sdr.html;

Why SDR, why not use a traditional spectrum analyzer instrument?  So
far I've been using the SA function in my CMU200, with a suitable
antenna on the RF4 IN port (the input-only port for weak signals), and
it's been working great for looking at both PCS1900 and GSM850 bands.

> and mapping the existing base stations with gr-gsm.

A map of existing GSM base stations would say almost nothing about
spectrum utilization: there are very few GSM signals left around here,
while most of the spectrum in the two traditional cellular bands is
taken up by non-GSM signals for sheeple smartphones.  The picture
becomes very clear when looking at my CMU200 SA display: the few
narrow peaks produced by the few remaining GSM cells are clearly
visible, and so are the wide swaths of sheeple brainwashing emissions.

> In this way you can pick an
> ARFCN that has the lowest chance of stepping on the toes of an
> nearby base station :-)

I already did this analysis, but I will boot up my CMU200 and look at
the spectrum one more time, to make sure that nothing changed, before
I fire up my BTS.

M~