OpenBSC November 2025

openbsc@lists.osmocom.org

17 participants
34 discussions

SMS: UCS-2 concatenation with UTF16 emoticons
by Keith 26 Apr '26

26 Apr '26

Hi all, I noticed that SMS with emoticons on the boundary of the concatenated segments are not displaying correctly on the destination handset. * - imagine the disaster when that kiss-blowing smiley face thing at the end of your SMS turns out as a diamond with a ? for the recpipient! OMG, the potential butterfly effect is too much to think about... :)) So... This is my analysis: We have 140 bytes for the message, less the 6 bytes for the user header data in the case of concatenated SMS , leaving 134 bytes. It's well know that this means 67 characters per segment for an SMS using UCS-2 encoding. But, it we fill the message with emoticons that are using 4 bytes per 'character', then we have space for 134/4 = 33 and a half. Ooops. Still, the destination handset should reassemble the message and stick the two "halves" of the emoticon together, right? - except I'm not observing this. To rule out us doing something wrong in osmo, I wonder might somebody else (who has an unlimited SMS package) from a commercial provider try sending some crafted SM from one emoji-enabled phone to another, something like this: 😱abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123😱56789 That's likely going to get mangled by mailing list or your mua, so it is: [4 byte emoji]abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123[4 byte emoji]56789 You could also try various messages filled with emojis. Of course, if you bring up your osmo network with SMPP-mirror you can watch the trace in wireshark, you'll see when the last emoji gets chopped in two. You could try the same message on osmo and your commerical network. If it's actually a problem of the phones, you should get [4 byte emoji]abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123[two diamonds with ?]56789 Thanks! Keith.

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Front and back sides of an MSC
by Mychaela Falconia 26 Apr '26

26 Apr '26

Hello Osmocom community, I have a question about terminology that is not really specific to Osmocom, but is specific to GSM/3G/etc cellular industry, or whatever is left of it. An MSC in a GSM or 3G or any other circuit-switched cellular network has two sides: one side facing the RAN (A interface in GSM, IuCS in 3G), the other side facing PSTN or ISDN or BICC or SIP-I or whatever the fixed telephone network may be. My question: is there a general industry-wide agreement as to which side should be called the front and which should be called the back? To me it seems intuitive to refer to the A/IuCS side of an MSC as the front and the PSTN/ISDN/BICC/SIP-I side of the same MSC as the back. However, I am just one person, and I have no idea whether or not my view is intuitive to others. And it would even worse if the opposite convention happens to be widely used... Hence I am asking this community, in the hope that someone with more industry experience would know how telco network engineers casually refer to RAN-facing and fixed-network-facing sides of an MSC. For a long time I had the idea of building ThemWi MSC as a modular system (multiple processes talking to each other via sockets) with a stripped-down OsmoMSC derivative as the "central" component, and with a radically different placement of MSC-MGW. However, as I started working on more detailed design, I realized a major flaw in my originally envisioned architecture: my original approach to MSC-MGW would break TFO for AMR, specifically the dialogue between TFO-aware BTS and the TRAU equivalent in the MGW. I am now spinning a new architecture in my head, one which tentatively includes two dissimilar MGWs in the MSC. If my front vs back terminology is valid, then the front MGW (talking to AoIP user plane) would perform speech transcoding but become a transparent pass-through for CSD (basically a software-only, IP-based equivalent of a hardware TCSM colocated at the MSC site), while the back MGW would be a transparent pass-through for speech calls, but turn into a complex IWF for CSD. This tentative architecture exactly matches the placement of speech transcoding and CSD IWF functions in traditional hardware MSCs of TDM-based, before-AoIP world. But I need to know if I should keep these front and back terms, or swap them the other way around. M~

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cmd2 update causing pySim-shell to fail
by bryan coxwell 25 Apr '26

25 Apr '26

Hi all, Just wanted to share an issue and a quick workaround I found for it in case anyone else has the same problem. I believe a cmd2 update is causing pySim-shell to fail. After installing it on a fresh install of Ubuntu Server 20.04 and getting the following error when I run "python3 pySim-shell -p0": >Using PC/SC reader interface >Autodetected card type: sysmoUSIM-SJS1 >AIDs on card: > USIM: a0000000871002ffffffff8907090000 >Traceback (most recent call last): > File "pySim-shell.py", line 512, in <module> > app = PysimApp(card, rs, opts.script) > File "pySim-shell.py", line 59, in __init__ > super().__init__(persistent_history_file='~/.pysim_shell_history', allow_cli_args=False, use_ipython=True, auto_load_commands=False, command_sets=basic_commands, >startup_script=script) >TypeError: __init__() got an unexpected keyword argument 'use_ipython' If you run into this you can fix it by uninstalling cmd2 and reinstalling cmd2 with "pip3 install cmd2==1.5". Best, Bryan

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Buy custom Pins in CA at Affordable Price
by stevesm10090＠gmail.com 21 Apr '26

21 Apr '26

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ip.access nano 3G S8 Configuration
by John Thewlis - Meath Broadband 20 Apr '26

20 Apr '26

We are trying to setup this AP as part of the 3.5G Osmocom project. We have the software stack operational and are now preparing the nano for testing. When we try to login via telnet at port 8090 we are getting a constant refusal to connect:- root@osm/openbsc/openbsc/src/ipaccess# telnet 192.168.192.30 8090 Trying 192.168.192.30... telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused The device seems to be locked as indicated by the leds on the front panel. We have tried resetting the nano to see if this would help but to no avail. Any ideas as to how to access the device for initial configuration?. Thanks John

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Need nano3G (S8 - Model 237A)
by Akib Sayyed 16 Apr '26

16 Apr '26

Dear List I am extremely sorry for off the topic question. I am willing to buy nano3G Nodeb. Is anyone in list have spare which can be sold. Please let me know. -- Akib Sayyed Matrix-Shell akibsayyed(a)gmail.com akibsayyed(a)matrixshell.com Mob:- +91-966-514-2243 <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campai…> Virus-free. www.avast.com <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campai…> <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>

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Splitting out M3UA and MTP3 out of Open BSC into a separate library
by Arran Cudbard-Bell 15 Apr '26

15 Apr '26

Hi, Developing a module for FreeRADIUS to support EAP-SIM and EAP-AKA authentication against a HLR. The HLR we were targeting only supported a SCTP/M3UA/SCCP/TCAP/MAP stack, so we couldn't use SUA. Ripping the M3UA/MTP3 code out of OpenBSC worked surprisingly well. We ended up running the event loop in a separate thread to work around the threading issues. Unfortunately the HLR implements the ANSI variant of everything, whereas OpenBSC and supporting libraries seem to have been written to be compatible with the ITU standards. ...but the differences are fairly minor at MTP3 and SCCP layers, and i've started work on a patchset for libosmo-sccp. https://gerrit.osmocom.org/#/c/73/ Anyway, trying to gauge interest in splitting those layers out of Open BSC into a separate library, would be happy to take on M2UA as well for consistency. It would almost certainly get more projects using the code. There's very little out there even in Perl land for working with SS7. Thanks, -Arran Arran Cudbard-Bell <a.cudbardb(a)freeradius.org> FreeRADIUS Development Team FD31 3077 42EC 7FCD 32FE 5EE2 56CF 27F9 30A8 CAA2

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GSM Silent call
by samir 15 Apr '26

15 Apr '26

Hi, I have read that silent-calls in GSM can be used to make a call to a target MS and listen to it without having the target knowing it. Is this theoretically possible ? If yes, can it be done in OpenBSC ?

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[PATCH 4/4] core/conv: Add optimized Viterbi decoding
by Vadim Yanitskiy 15 Apr '26

15 Apr '26

Hi Tom and all, After a quick look at the 4th patch, related to your optimized Viterbi decoder, I have noticed that currently the convolutional code definitions from the 'src/gsm/gsm0503_conv.c' are out of the 'tests/conv' test coverage... So, I would like to extend the test coverage. All I need are the test vectors, which I'll add to existing ones. Some of them I already found in your 4th patch, but some pending I need to write myself. Right now I have a simple question... Let's look at one example: { .name = "GSM RACH (non-recursive, flushed, not punctured)", .code = &gsm_conv_rach, .in_len = 14, .out_len = 36, // ??? .has_vec = 0, .vec_in = { }, .vec_out = { }, } As I noticed, the 'in_len' may be taken from the code definition: const struct osmo_conv_code gsm0503_rach = { .N = 2, .K = 5, .len = 14, // The 'in_len' is here! .next_output = xcch_output, .next_state = xcch_state, }; But I don't know how to calculate the 'out_len'... Could you please give me some hint? I already started to work on your 4th patch: https://gerrit.osmocom.org/1542 https://gerrit.osmocom.org/1543 With best regards, Vadim Yanitskiy.

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Is It Worth It to Pay Someone to Take My Online CompTIA Exam?
by olivianaylor322＠gmail.com 09 Apr '26

09 Apr '26

I’ve been struggling with my CompTIA exam prep and honestly, it's been hard to manage everything. The idea of asking someone to take my online CompTIA exam for me https://www.theresearchguardian.com/take-my-comptia-exam-for-me/ seemed a bit extreme at first, but after seeing how many students do it, I’m starting to consider it seriously. If anyone has tried this service, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Was it worth the investment? How reliable were the test takers? I just want to make sure I'm making the right choice.

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OpenBSC November 2025