Alfie introduction

[Mychaela Falconia]

Hi Alfie,

> Hi! Not sure if anyone is active here. I'm Alfie, and I joined because I'm
> very passionate about old phones and 2G in general. Like, I wanna be able
> to use an old flip-phone in 2024, you know? Anyhoo, I'm happy to be here 8D

You are in the right place. :)  Using a GSM/2G phone in 2024 is still
very much possible, although the level of difficulty depends on your
geopolitical location and personal circumstances.  Some countries like
Mexico are really awesome: you can walk into a cellular operator's
retail store, buy a SIM, insert it into your choice of phone, and it
will Just Work.  (Source: personal experience with Mexican Telcel,
using the SIM I bought and activated less than a year ago.)  In USA
the situation is more difficult: the GSM/2G network of T-Mobile is
still up (the planned shutdown date of 2024-04-02 was withdrawn, and
no new date announced), but in order to use it without being artificially
blocked, you need to be a grandfathered or grandmothered customer from
many years ago, like I am.

And then there are crazy people like me who are devoted to GSM so
strongly that we are willing to operate our own base stations
surreptitiously (without a license), and do a lot of custom work to
interconnect these insurgent networks with the real PSTN.  Thankfully
in USA we have services like bulkvs.com that make it easy to obtain
real 10-digit phone numbers in the North American Numbering Plan and
then interconnect with the real phone network (PSTN) over a regular
Internet connection...

Please tell more about yourself, as much as you feel like sharing, and
let's see where our common interests take us!

For future postings though, please set your subject line to something
more meaningful than an empty string.  I had to change it to
"Re: Alfie introduction" for this reply.

Hasta la Victoria, Siempre,
Mychaela aka The Mother