Here is the text of an email being sent to ALL UK accounts with a Telraam S2 which I’m sharing here for general reference and also in case anyone has any questions - it is easier to go into more detail here:
Thank you for your patience and support while we investigated and have been trying to resolve the connection issues for Telraam S2 devices in the UK. We are really sorry that you may have been unable to collect the traffic data you wanted but this is an issue that is affecting all our devices in the UK but we now believe we have a plan to resolve it.
As you probably know, our S2 device connects to the internet using a built-in modem and a SIM, a bit like a mobile phone but on a different network. The onboard software, or firmware, of our device is built around these SIMs, so they are the only way for our devices to connect to our servers, and they rely on there being a network to connect to. In the UK only O2 has a suitable national network and this was working very well most of 2023. However, a sudden change of policy by O2 at the end of October 2023 means we can no longer connect to that network.
Over the last couple of months we worked with our partners to find a fix and bypass O2, by instructing our devices to ignore O2 and try to find alternative networks. There is a trial network from Vodafone being deployed in the UK, but Vodafone’s coverage is limited. A handful of devices have been able to connect to this, but it is not a solution for everyone so we cannot rely on it.
We had high hopes for a quick hardware-fix, adding a dongle to your device to allow it to use your home wifi to connect instead. Unfortunately, while this seemed simpler and quicker, upon further investigation, we don’t think this is a robust or long-term solution, so we’d rather do this properly.
Telraam have therefore taken the decision to invest in redeveloping and reprogramming our firmware that will allow us to use other SIMs for the UK and to source ones that will be able to connect to O2 directly. This work will take us several weeks as well as time to test. As you can imagine this is a major undertaking, but Telraam is committed to getting your devices working again and to support all our customers, campaigners and local authorities, and as such will be committing substantial resources to making this happen as quickly as possible.
We aim to get the job done by 1st of April. When the work is done, we will swap your existing device with a brand new one with the new software and new SIM. If you bought it directly from us, we will tell you how to send it back and get your replacement device. If you are a part of a local network we will coordinate this with the network manager who will arrange to collect and replace your device along with the others in your network.
Arranging this swap will take some effort and we will prepare this in parallel with the development of the fix. More detailed instructions will follow in due course.
We are truly sorry you’ve been unable to count traffic in recent months because of this, but we hope to get you counting again as soon as we can, and to support you for many years to come.
I have written to all network managers in the UK so we can better coordinate with those who are members of networks through these channels. We hope this can all get sorted reasonably quickly now, and we can start swapping devices as soon as we possibly can.