Carriers

Posted Nov 10, 2017 17:02 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
In reply to: Carriers by nim-nim
Parent article: An update on the Android problem

> The same mechanism is used for firmware updates, the phone asks the network 'is there an update for me, I am model X with firmware Y', and if the network infra answers yes and you accept the update the firmware is downloaded from network distribution nodes without being billed as 'internet access'.

I really don't think this is happening when you don't buy the phone from a telco. By the way most phones recommend you switch to wifi before accepting to download.

> That means carriers can block the distribution of updates even after they've been made available by the manufacturer, [...] Trying to shortcut carriers with direct internet updates, would just result in carrier refusal to accept connexions from corresponding phones.

Again this is only for phones bought from the telco (which is very rare in some countries)

> I don't see carriers giving up this power easily. A bad update would cause lots of problems for them, especially if it hits a large number of phones at once

Updates from Google are always staggered (Apple may be different)