I’m sorry to say that there appears to be a temporary issue for a number of UK Telraam S2 devices at the moment.
A small number of devices that were working perfectly fine are apparently unable to reach our servers so the data is not being stored.
We are very sorry about this and want to let you know that we are working on it and doing what we can.
As you know, our devices use the “Internet of Things” (IoT) and despite all the hype, this is still an emerging area of technology, and so things do not always go smoothly! It seems that there is an issue between the supplier of the SIM cards in the devices, and the mobile network operator in the UK (O2).
We are not yet 100% sure on the reasons or solutions for this, but our partners are actively looking into this with us and we do hope to resolve it very soon indeed. In the meantime, don’t worry about your individual device.
We may ask you to reboot it at some stage (just to rest the connections), but for now, leave it on and in place and hopefully it will pick up a signal as soon as this is resolved.
If you do have any further questions about your particular device, then do feel free to write to support@telraam.net from your registered email address so we can look into this for you.
If you have any general questions or comments, feel free to post them here and I’ll do my best to deal with them.
Latest update:
The investigation by our partner, Thingstream, has resulted in some further news, but we don’t yet have a timeline for getting all devices online again. I’m sharing an extract of a message that we are sending to all UK Telraam network owners, with more information:
BACKGROUND
Our connectivity partner is a business called Thingstream who supply us with these SIM cards and they in turn negotiate ‘roaming’ connections with operators in countries around the world. In the case of the UK they have a general agreement with Telefonica, ultimate owners of O2 among others. Telraam does not negotiate directly with these operators.
From some time around the 26th of October we noticed that a number of our devices in the UK were no longer connecting to our servers, but the devices were operating normally. In the following days the issue became progressively worse, and has affected some geographical regions more than others. In investigating this, we immediately raised the issue with Thingstream who reached out to O2.
The cause, we now understand, is that O2 unilaterally decided to enforce restrictions on roaming devices, and because of some issue did not recognise the agreement that Thingstream had with Telefonica, and so our devices are being blocked. This is also affecting other businesses like ours.
O2 is aware of this issue and is working with Telefonica and Thingstream to fix it. Unfortunately we do not have any further information on when it will be fixed or when our devices will be online, …
We will also be sending an email to S2 owners shortly in case they weren’t aware. Do feel free to post any questions in this topic and we’ll do our best to answer them.
We still have no good news on this issue for our own devices, I’m afraid.
We are still pushing VERY hard for a resolution. More importantly, it has been confirmed to us that this is a major issue affecting MUCH larger businesses than us with many thousands of devices (imagine all those disconnected fridges, security cameras, freight trackers, etc), and they too will be putting pressure to get it resolved.
We will bring you more news as soon as we get it
We’ve been quiet for a few days here because we do not have any good news to share yet, but we have not stopped pushing for this to be resolved.
Sadly, neither we nor our partners have had any further information from O2 or Telefonica on a resolution to this issue. We are very aware that some devices have now been unable to connect for almost a month, while others seem to be operating fine still. It is most confusing and frustrating, even for us.
We just wanted to reassure you all that we are doing all that we can and we really want to get you all back online as soon as we can.
In the meantime there is no need to do anything with your device at this stage, so don’t worry about rebooting it.
Here is the latest news, as promised.
Unfortunately, the issue has still not been resolved, but we have a bit of good news following some more detailed investigation and work with our partners.
While in some areas there are no connections at all, in others our devices have been able to switch to an alternative network that we were not originally aware was operating.
It seems that Vodafone had begun rolling out a separate network and our devices are designed to locate this alternative connection. This means that where there is a Vodafone network of suitable strength and reliability, the devices are still connected. However, that network is still limited.
It is not a solution for everyone at the moment, and small comfort if your device does not have a signal, and we are sorry about this, but it does show that the design of the system to “fall back” to other networks if needed is working. Sadly, the Vodafone network does not yet have national coverage, and so will be patchy.
It seems that Vodafone are working on their network, so new connections are possible as this rolls on and works are completed. We encourage you to keep your devices powered just in case anything changes locally.
We still hope for a swift resolution by O2 and that all devices are available again all over the country.
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