We are currently seeing connection problems to one of Three's GGSNs. Any SIM trying to connect across that GGSN is timing out as a result.Connections across the other GGSN are completing as normal, and each SIM will eventually try to use that GGSN for routing.

Unfortunately this is outside of our control, as the SIM's routing is randomly picked each time. As a result, you may be seeing problems with SIMs connecting. Three are currently investigating the fault, and more information will be provided as soon as it becomes available. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

An update from Three

Three have advised that they are currently experiencing a major network fault between two of their sites, resulting in some SIMs not being able to stabilise on a particular route. This is being treated as a priority 1 issue by Three's NOC and we should be receiving an update within the hour.

Update:

Traffic has been approaching normal levels for the last few hours, and we have been advised by Three that they have identified a fault on one of their routers and are working to resolve.

Some data SIMs may disconnect between 01:00:00 and 03:00:00 on the morning of 2013-03-08 due to a change being made within Three's network. This window should be considered an at risk period.

As per http://status.aa.net.uk/apost.cgi?incident=1622 our Mobile Voice SIM service is being withdrawn at the end of April DATA SIMS are unaffected by this.

We do hope to offer a new service, maybe later in the year, that will work in a similar way - we have some possible candidates, but nothing we can set up yet to replace the current service.

Customers fall in to different categories...

1. Some SIMs will be SIP2SIP, meaning that the SIM has no number, but is used registered to some other device such as their PABX or asterisk box. These will simply stop. We cannot offer a replacement service.

2. Some SIMs will be on a normal (01/02/03) number. They will stop as a mobile but the number can be retained on normal £1/month terms and be directed as needed. The service allows SIP phones, and diverts (also ring) as required. you could, for example, divert to a new mobile number so incoming calls still work for them. There is a cost for the mobile divert at our normal rates (5p/min+VAT for mobiles now).

3. Some SIMs will be on one of our 07 numbers. These are rarer. They can keep the number. However, OFCOM rules require the call to have a wireless leg. This means we cannot simply send to SIP or a landline. What we have just changed is a system to allow these numbers to work if being diverted (also ring) to another 07 number. This will allow divert to another mobile (and so be within OFCOM rules). They will be the same £1/month service. Again, there is a cost to divert to mobile. Please do contact sales for further help as required.

The actual terminiation date of voice SIMs will be 30th April 2013 - NOT 31st March as previosly published - sorry for the confusion.

Customers have asked for ways to manage usage levels on data SIMs and we are looking in to ways to do this using the same technology as used for the Home::1 tariff.

At present we are now able to set a monthly quota on a SIM which requires the accounts password to add more quota on the fly.

In the longer term we may sell pre-pay SIM packages if customers are interested.

Right now we are interested in anyone wanting to trial this quota system. It is not a change to pricing or billing in any way - just a way to ensure you don't get a surprise bill at the end of the month. It could be ideal for SIMs in kids iPads, etc. We're also working on a way to notify people when their remaining quota reaches a level.

Contact the trials team and let us know what sort of monthly quota you want to set.

We now send advisory emails when data usage on a SIM has reached a certain amount.

It's only an advisory email and we do not block or cap the service in any way, it's just to let you know.

We'll send the email only once a month, once the level has been reached. The default is £10 but existing SIMs that have used more than that have had their level suitably increased. Customers can can change the level on control pages.

There are likely to be changes to mobile voice SIM services in six months time. We are currently assessing the announcement from our suppliers and should be able to provide more details over the next few days. However, we do not expect changes to be necessary for at least 6 months.

There are no changes to data SIMs expected.

The details we have so far is that it looks like our supplier will be stopping the voice SIMs in just over 6 months time. However, we don't have all of the details yet, or whether there are options to keep SIMs working after that date.

There are a number of possible ways for us to address this, and we are looking to find other carriers that could offer a similar service to us. The ncie thing is, that if we do find an alternative service, the way the service works would stay basically the same (at least for calls) and not involve any number changes.

In any case, even if the voice SIMs can no longer be provided, we can direct existing numbers to another mobile number for incoming calls at a small cost.

So, at the moment, we know voice SIMs are safe for 6 months, and hope to have more news soon on the ongoing service after that point.

Voice SIMs are still available for purchase - there is a warning as part of the ordering page that services is not be available after April 2013. We have also reduced the cost of voice SIMs to £5+VAT from today.

I personally use the voice SIMs for my mobile, and integrate with the office phone system. It is immensely useful and will be a great shame if I cannot continue this service. As such, I have made it a priority to investigate and test alternative suppliers and services before any changes to the existing voice SIM service. Adrian. Director.

This morning, we have reduced mobile data from 2.5p/MB to 2p/MB.

This applies to data usage on our Voice and Data SIMs.

There are no other changes, we we are still working on ways to get native IPv6 on Data SIMs. Data is metered to the byte and charged just for what you use. Data SIMs still include fixed IPv4 and blocks of IPv4, as well as tunnelled IPv6 (which have the overhead of an IPv4 header). We can also relay L2TP for data SIMs for private network use (IPv4 only at present).

Thanks to those that have helped with testing the data SIM roaming. We expect at present that there will not be any extra billing for this.

In theory data roaming should work everywhere three have roaming as, unlike voice romaing, it is always sent back through the home network.

Unfortunately it seems that getting the billing systems in place over all of the links involved is proving a challenge, and so at present data SIM roaming is disabled on all SIMs.

Once we have the billing systems, and price lists, this will be offered as an option.

Thanks again for help testing.

The data fill for our new 074411 mobile number block was announced months ago, and some of the mobile networks even confirmed it. However, tests have shown that they are still not working. This has been chased regularly. They *DO* work from BT lines.

We have had some good news - after a report from a customer of Orange apparently telling them that "Orange do not have the technology to route to those numbers as they are VoIP" it seems Orange and O2 should have call routing in around 2 weeks.

Texting is a different matter sadly, and we don't have anything definite on that front at all yet.

I'll post more details as we have them. One thing we cannot determine easily is what charges they will be. We expect around the 10p/minute mark if charged, but as a lot of mobile tariffs include calls "to other mobile networks" we have no idea. Mobile tariffs are complex at the best of times.

We have just set up our new mobile numbers on the ordering system. In theory they should be working from BT lines tomorrow. They are not working from everywhere though and that could take weeks or even months. Inbound SMS is likely to be an issue for a while as well.

However, you can now buy your mobile numbers. They start 074411. They are the same price even though not fully working yet - you are just paying for picking numbers earlier

They must be associated with a voice SIM to work. That does not stop voicemail or diverts though. We have asked OFCOM to confirm this is acceptable usage (as the rules technically do not even allow voicemail!).

The main advantage is inbound calls to your voice SIM are free to receive if the call is to the mobile number as the caller is paying mobile rates to make the call. A&A to A&A calls to A&A mobile numbers are 2.5p/min+VAT rather than free and still the recipient does not pay in those cases. I hope that make sense.

Inbound texts will still cost, sorry - working on that one.

And well done one person ordering two of these numbers before I announced anything!

Whilst native IPv6 on our data SIMs will not be working until later this year we have a work around for now.

In the IPv6 configuration on the control pages you can set up routing for primary and backup and tertiary for when you have multiple lines.

You can now set the tunnel endpoint separately for IPv6 tunnelling for these. This means you can, for example, have native IPv6 on broadband but tunnelled IPv6 on a data SIM as a fall back.

If you do not set a tunnel for your data IPv6 routing it will not try and route via the data SIM for now, avoiding a routing black hole.

This has now been tested using an FB2700 with PPPoE DSL and mobile dongle and data SIM and the fall back works perfectly for both IPv4 and IPv6!

As we are about to launch the new data SIMs we are working on the data billing aspects finally.

This has been hampered by tryign to get details of roaming charges. We have some information now and hope to be able to publish full prices soon. Roaming for voice and data has been limited for now.

The data billing is for voice and data SIMs. For voice it is general internet access. For data it is internet access or L2TP handover. Both are starting at 2.5p/MB transfered either way.

So we should be billing for data either in the next few days or on the monthly bills.

http://aaisp.net.uk/news-2010-10-simdata.html

We are pleased to announce that we expect to be offering our new mobile data services in October 2010. This is subject to final confirmation with the carrier, but things are going well with the initial testing now.

The service consists of 3G data SIM cards that allow full IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity using AAISP IP address space and routing.

• Fixed IP address mobile devices
• IPv6 mobile devices (subject to mobile device support)
• DSL alternative with blocks of IPv4 addresses, and IPv6 for non-NAT internet connections
• Connection via AAISP network with no filtering or proxies or black boxes just like our broadband and Ethernet services.
• 3G DSL fall-back allowing data SIM to take over routing of all of your IPv4 and IPv6 addresses directly. We expect to be selling equipment to support DSL routers and 3G and bonding in November.
• Corporate network handover via L2TP, have mobiles connect directly in to your own office network. No need for VPN setup or support on the mobile.
• Simple tariff with no minimum usage levels or minimum term.

Our current pricing is £10 for the SIM, £2/month on-air, and 2.5p/MB for data (plus VAT). No minimum term, and no bundles. Simple. You can even buy SIMs and not activate them until you need them paying no ongoing charges until then.

There have been minor changes behind the scenes to finally fix the CLI issues we saw on mobiles when using prefixes (e.g. 9 for work number as a prefix). This is now sorted "properly" and the workaround we had in place removed. Any issues let me know on irc.

There will be a few minor tweaks this evening as well but they should not disrupt any calls.

Bad news everyone - we have CDRs for data usage.

Plan is to provide this on clueless and ensure billing is right for end of the month.

Worse news, dates back to 24th April.

There are many details of the mobile service which are gradually progressing. One of these is roaming.

We have had successful customer tests in Poland this morning. It is not perfect yet - as the phone can roam to a network which won't allow calls to be made, but one at least two of the networks that the customer could access the phone worked both ways (albeit with an odd CLI).

We don't have details of roaming prices yet, but it is a step closer.

We are making a lot of porgress on a new SIP server, so should be testing over the weekend. The testing allows us to switch individual test numbers and phones over to the new server and keep the existing one doing it's stuff. This means there is no real impact on customers (unless you are helping us test).

However, one aspect of the testing is on the mobiles, and we will switch all mobiles over to the new server for calls made from the mobiles in one go at some point when we have done more testing. I don't know if we will have things that far advanced by the end of the weekend, but there may be some testing and switching back perhaps. We can't redirect the mobiles one at a time to test sadly.

If there are any issues I'll text beta testers and let you know.

The new SIP server should allow us to provide a number of new features that we could not offer before because of the way * worked. I'll keep you posted and I aim to have much more extensive documentation as part of the process.

I am hoping to switch mobile originated calls to the new server for testing tomorrow.

It may not stay on the new server for long. It could mean some minutes of calls not working. It will mean no recording on calls from mobiles while testing. I'll update on irc.

We expect to be testing the SIM2SIP features where a mobile acts as a SIP hanset on a customer call server.

We won't be making the call server live until we have the call recording sorted.

I did not quite get as far as I had hoped. It is close though. We have the CDRs working.

I am getting bogged down in call transfers at the moment - all good fun. However, I have been impressed that we can to/from put a call on hold from a SNOM phone, and the mobile knows it is on hold! Seems that when you have full access to the low level SIP messages the PSTN network is much nicer that you would think having come from an asterisk background.

Need to sort call transfer, the outgoing registration messages to 3rd party SIP servers for mobiles (that should be pretty easy), and a few minor things. But before we can go live I have to sort call recording properly. That will be slightly more challenging...

More news next week...

We are now able to enable basic internet access on the voice SIMs (uses "3"'s NAT IPv4s for now). Ask Jam in the #trial irc channel and he'll enable for you. Takes a few minutes.

Uses the APN set in the SIM, or (it seems) any APN in fact.

We are pleased to say that the iPad 3G does indeed work with A&A SIM cards. It does mean using a pair of scissors or a knife to cut down the SIM as marked (at your own risk) but the first customer to try this reports that all is well.

We have a few people on-line now with initial testing and so far so good.

We plan to start doing more general beta testing, with ordering SIMs via the web site, from 1st June with the normal charge of 10 pounds plus VAT for SIMs.

We know of a few snags still but the basics are there now. There are a long list of smaller points to be sorted before a proper launch.

Thank you all for your help.

P.S. one of the things we will be doing next month, soonish, is changing to a new platform for the call routing for mobiles rather than asterisk.

OK, getting close. I even have internet access on my phone. Couple of small niggles before we do general beta testing.

OK, catch me on irc tomorrow and ask nicely - some voice SIMs are being released for initial testing, free SIM, normal ongoing charges. Voice and text, not roaming, geo number, no data. Limited offer. pre-beta testing if you like. http://aaisp.net.uk/legal-terms-trial.html

We hope to offer the wholesale model trial very soon with connection of mobile to your call server, this is not part of this initial testing, so please do bear with us if you need that.

Thanks for the volunteers - we'll announce when we do the beta properly. If anyone else wants a SIM ask Jam on #trial

We are one step closer in that we now have processing of texts sent from the mobiles.

We still need to sort some data access on the voice SIMs and there are two niggles I would like fixed too but not essential for beta testing.

So, close.

One of the ideas we have with the mobile and SIP services is people can have a single number. One number that their calls come from, and that people can call that rings the desk phone and the mobile. We can already do that in various ways, and we'll probably be allowing SIP login and mobile on the same number as well to avoid an extra "hidden" number in the process.

Ironically, one of the other things people like is separate work and personal contacts - especially as work can be a group number or something they can turn off at weekends, etc.

We have some of this working already. The plan, for now, is to make it that you can present a different number when calling in a different way. The idea at present is "9 for an outside line". i.e. a 9 prefix causes calls to be "from" your "work" number. We can then make incoming calls present with a 9 prefix on the CLI if calling the "work" number, so you can tell, and even have saved contacts for work and non work in a phone's memory and present the right CLI when calling.

Right now, the 9 prefix idea is not quite panning out as we are unable to present a prefix on the incoming CLI to the mobiles. But we are working on it with the suppliers. For now we are actually using a * suffix on the number, which is working, but not ideal.

So, when we launch mobiles (soon, we hope), we will have this sort of dual number working one way or another. We may be able to extend the idea more than one number. Whatever we do should also work on any of our SIP services. So, watch this space...

The plan now is that using a prefix will operate via a totally separate VoIP account so features (like call recording, etc) can be separate for the work and home numbers, as well as billing.

We now have staff testing well under way. We have much of the billing systems in place too. However, there are key aspects that are not quite right yet, so we can't really start beta testing with customers yet.

Hopefully it won't be long. Please bear with us.

OK, we have most of the staff phones testing phase (alpha test).

We have calls and texts both ways - but not working quite the way they should, and we are testing the billing processes.

We hope soon to allow customer beta testers. Watch this space!

Just to keep you posted - we are at the stage that we should be able to handle incoming calls and texts on mobiles now. Not yet at the stage for full staff testing. So still looking like a couple of weeks until we can run beta testing.

http://aaisp.net.uk/legal-terms-trial.html

Sorry if last posting on this was a tease...

Yes, we are closer, so worth explaining more...

http://aaisp.net.uk/telecoms-mobile.html has some initial information. We have to add roaming and a few other bits. It is not final yet.

Beta testers will be people testing before we launch. There may be some discount on the initial SIM cost for that but otherwise costs will be as we plan to launch with.

When we start beta testing, which I expect early May at the latest, we'll provide details on irc.

Sorry it is taking so long - waiting on suppliers as ever...

OK, getting close. Staff phones have SIMs that register now. It is a matter of days before we can handle calls.

We expect data services linked to our IPs and iPv6, etc, to take a bit longer, but we are working on that.

Once we have staff phones working, and (of course) some sort of billing in place, we can take on beta testers. We'll let you know when. Still a few weeks away yet.

OK, I said I would keep people posted. I have several nice boxes of SIMs now, but am not yet able to activate any until next week at the earliest. I'll keep you posted on progress. In the mean time we are working out how to print them (they are blank/white).

No, I am not shipping phones or SIMs yet!

Yes, I am prepared to try laser cutting a mini-SIM down to a micro-SIM for iPad use.

Sorry - can't laser cut that plastic - it goes all funny (technicaly term). So can't make micro SIMs.

Plan for micro-SIMs is, once we sort printing on the SIM cards, is to print the micro-SIM outline so people can (at their own risk) cut them down themselves.

Printing the outline for the micro-SIM is fine. Not yet tested with scissors yet.

Just an update as things are taking longer than expected.

SIMs have been paid for and exist, but need "scanning" in to the network before we get our hands on them.

We can now source various SIM free phones to sell too.

We are really hoping we will have staff testing voice and data mobile service this month.

I'll post when we start looking for initial testers.

We've noticed that some new DATA SIMs are requiring the APN to be set to 'm2m.aql.net' as otherwise they will only get an internet connection in to Three, and not in to us.

Normally an APN is not required, and only needed if roaming.

This seems to only be affecting SIMs activated since 1st May 2013.

Our carriers are looking in to the reason for this and will update us shortly.

This looks to have been caused by a change in the Three network, however Three partly reverted their change. They will finish this on the night of 8th May.

The carrier have made changed to try to fix this but we are still seeing SIMs  onnecting in to Three rather than being relayed in to us. We are chasing this.

The carrier completed further work on this over night, and it appears that affected SIMs are now working without the need for the APN. We've tested an affected SIM succsessfully in the office.

Three are upgrading routers on the 27th of March between 00:00 and 07:00. This may cause some SIM connections to drop, but they should automatically reconnect.

Our carrier for data SIMs will be carrying out maintenance which may cause SIMs to disconnect and reconnect via another LNS. All connections will be dropped cleanly therefore SIMs should try to re establish quickly.

The maintenance window is between 22:00 and 23:00 on Thurs 1st Nov during which time there maybe multiple disconnections.

Three have a problem with their provisioning API which is preventing SIM activations at the moment.

There is not yet an estimated timescale for a fix.

This is not affecting SIMs that are already activated.

The problem has been identified and should be rectified shortly.

This is still a problem and has been escalated with the supplier.

Next update will be later this afternoon.

Three have resolved this problem, we apologise for the inconvenience.

Fixed.

Three will be carrying out a restart of one of their SGSNs during this window, causing a ten minute interruption to its routing. This has the potential to affect customers in the south east of England if their traffic is passing through this SGSN.

Three need to carry out emergency maintenance tomorrow morning (04/01/12) between 01:00-06:00

The mobile service should be considered at risk during this period. Sorry for the short notice!

There was a blip around 10:04 which caused data SIMs to drop off line for a couple of minutes, but this looks to be part of a series of issues since around 1am which are affecting some of our interconnects. Mostly this is affecting some wholesale customers and data SIMs and not broadband lines generally.

It appears datahop have had issues with at least one switch at 1am and 10am which explains some the problems we have seen. There are some issues now which are being worked around whilst datahop fix things.

It looks like there have been some issues over night with data SIMs which we are working on now.

Looks to be resolved now.

For a few minutes calls made with AAISP mobiles were not connecting. Inbound calls worked.

This was a carrier problem - calls were not reaching us.

It now appears to be fixed.

It's fixed, and the cause being investigated.

Some upgrades are planned that could affect calls to A&A mobiles. This will only be the calls actually to the mobiles, and will not affect voicemail or diverts, etc.

This should not affect service, but there is a risk.

Similar to yesterdays work, we have service upgrades that are being done by the carriers. This may mean a disconnect of a few seconds possibly this evening and possibly some time tomorrow. There should be minimal impact and connections should re-establish immediately.

The service upgrades are to allow routed IP (IPv4 only) to allow broadband line 3G backup with blocks of IP, for example. The changes also allow username and password handling which we can pass through to L2TP customers.

This will leave the main issue for data SIMs remaining being IPv6, which we will update you on when we have more information.

Update expected around 10pm tonight

the new authentication system has caused some problems, and we are working on fixes. Basically unauthentcated data SIM connections are fine, but some authenticated ones are not (e.g. iPad). So there will be some slight disruption this evening on all data SIMs while we sort this and test scenarios.

The changes that allow routed IP blocks on mobile data SIMs has been reversed. This will be loaded again some time soon.

Once this is back in place you will be able to use DSL login and password on your data SIM to get routed IPv4 for that DSL line.

The upgrtade should be going ahead some time this morning.

It will allow routed Ip blocks if you use your DSL login and password on your A&A data SIM. This is IPv4 only at present.

The change was done, but authentcaited logins are not necessarily working at present.

Seems to be working as planned now.

We have service upgrades that are being done by the carriers. This may mean a disconnect of a few seconds possibly this evening and possibly some time tomorrow. There should be minimal impact and connections should re-establish immediately.

The service upgrades are to allow routed IP (IPv4 only) to allow broadband line 3G backup with blocks of IP, for example. The changes also allow username and password handling which we can pass through to L2TP customers.

This will leave the main issue for data SIMs remaining being IPv6, which we will update you on when we have more information.

To clarify, this is affecting data sims only.

this work has been carried out, however, there will be another update in the evening of 5th April

Sorry for thde delay posting this.

Data SIMs have been mostly not working most of the day. The carriers are still working on it.

Was working over night until 7am, and then broken.

Seems Ok since 5pm, so we are monitoring the situation.

Suppliers still working on it to be sure of a permanent fix.

Looks all sorted - working on better explanation.

There is a problem in 3's systems at the moment that is preventing us from activating SIMs.

This should be fixed soon, but in the mean time we'll see if there are any ways to work around this problem.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

No news yet unfortunately.

There is no way to work around this either.

This has now been fixed.

Our server for handling mobile data and direct L2TP connections and a few other minor things is showing issues with the usage graphs. We are investigating and may reload that server a few times with extra debug. The reload takes a fraction of a second but means reconnecting any in progress mobile data or external L2TP which can take a few seconds when it happens. Sorry for any inconvenience but we have not been able to reproduce the problem on test systems.

We believe we have got to ghe bottom of the issue with graphs.

Just to update on progress on the data SIMs.

There are all sorts of teething problems, and the mobile networks really are having a hard time understanding some of the basic concepts that we, as an ISP. take forgranted.

We do have some testers on-line with data SIMs on an A&A IP address working nicely. I can ping my iPad! To get on line you have to get hold of me on the #trial channel on irc and it may take some time as the SIMs are being added manually at the carrier.

Issues :-

- Reduced MTU (will be 1500 soon)

- Routed blocks of IPs (that is being a challenge but we know it has been done in another country so should be possible)

- Simple config on clueless (soon, honest)

- IPv6 (will be some time after hell freezes over if the mobile network has their way, but we don't intend to let them off the hook on this one, so watch this space - we can tunnel to IPv4)

- Roaming (We have some pricing which is not cheap and this should work in more places than voice, but at present no roaming, sorry)

- Moon on a stick and ponies (yes, they always end up on the list, tough)

So, all good fun.

L2TP handover to customers is also working!