Hi!

I have Manjaro i3 with Kernel 4.19.56-1, on a Lenovo Thinkpad W550s with a Sierra EM7345 Mobile Broadband.

Is it possible to select the cell phone carrier (similar to the option you get in an Android phone, in which you can choose different cell towers to connect to, as usually the system can automatically detect the optimal one, but sometimes it just doesn't) to which my mobile broadband connects? How could I do that?

thanks for any tips

Jose

I wouldn't even try. Radio circuitry has instant feedback, and I would never tell it that 'reception is better over there,' when it might not be. I had one of the original Motorola mobiles back in the '90s, and drive through the Ireland/NOI border (present at that time) while on a phone call. I changed provider and started roaming. I didn't lose the call. If they had it cussed that far back in the early days, I'd trust it now.

There is a percentage built in; If a signal is only marginally better, it won't bother switching. But if you flash the power, it will come up on the best one. Load also plays a factor. If a station is close to max, it might middle finger trivial switches to save remaining channel space.

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Thanks business_kid. I am sure it does work great 99.9%, specially in Europe and the US. But in remote areas of south america, I am glad my phone has the capability, because I use it. Typically, nobody has internet connection (though they do have cell voice signal) and me, the only one who knows how to, switches to another cell tower and voilà, I get internet connection.

So, if anybody know how to, would be great.

thanks!

Jose

I've been in Electronics since the late '70s on TV. It was an interesting time, because the telly everybody wanted was British television, but they didn't want us having it. So everyone was poaching signal any way they could. It wasn't unusal to see ultra-directional Hirschmann aerials on houses, on tall aerials, or tall towers. These might have BBC channels from Manchester, UTV from Belfast, or Harlech from Wales, RTE1 from Donnybrook Dublin, RTE2 (an awkward frequency overpowering signal) from the Three Rock Mountain with perhaps three aerials, amplifiers and filters. RTE2 was a bitch, as it used drown out the much weaker BBC if it got the chance.

Mobile frequencies are Microwave, line of sight things. They're also horizontally or vertically polarised. Learn where your aerial is, and see if your signal is better horizontally or vertically. Use it whichever way it's better. For sure, your reception will be better on the roof, or near a window with a clear line of sight. To help friends, I once spent an hour walking about their farm with a Hirschmann aerial dragging coaxial cable on my shoulder, while the wife had the television on and was yelling feedback on the signal quality. We found the best spot, and got the aerial up. Try a bit of that yourself. I don't know of anything like you suggest for pcs. If you had a wifi connection to your mobile Internet receiver (e.g. a wifi hotspot) you would probably be able to do better.

Thanks. I appreciate your help and experience. But, for example, I have a Samsung Galaxy S7. Sometimes it has no signal. I have to manually go to Network Operators: Search Network and manually choose one, and then it works. It might be a super specific situation, but it happens. And I suspect the same is happening to my Manjaro powered Lenovo and its Sierra Mobile Broadband.
In the worst scenario, if there is a similar way in linux to choose a different Network Operator (or cell tower), I could do so and learn that this is not the issue.
But I haven't yet discovered how.

Thanks

I don't believe there is such a thing. You could of course use your phone as a wifi hotspot, and bingo! Maybe somebosy has a project on github, and you could try having a read of this. https://hewlettpackard.github.io/wir...x.Wireless.pdf

It may make up your mind to continue or stop searching. Another way of going at it would be to email the wpa_supplicant maintainer. Worth a shot.

I feel for you.
But, have you even researched what is possible?
I suppose you use Network-Manager - it has options to edit connections etc.
What is there, and what isn't there that you'd need?
A Quick Search brings up some interesting results. Please read.

Back in the day I used wvdial - maybe it's still usable. Maybe it's more configurable.

That sounds like a very OK ad-hoc workaround.

I've just noticed you're changing cell towers on a Galaxy S7; I'm on the Galaxy S7 Edge. What app are you using?

@ondoho: Yes, as far as I know, wvdial is still there, but it's kwvdial these days, making it part of kde. You'd have to search.