Preparing an arbitrary LTE modem for working with a SIM card for a Yota modem using the example of Huawei E3272

The main motivator for creating this article was the fact that in order to restore the small set of steps that will be given below, I spent many hours, talked with two representatives of Yota and shoveled a million forums, blogs and similar resources (including quite useless post on Habré in my modem). I hope the text below will save someone time and effort.



Go to the main thing. Despite the fact that on the Internet they write that everything should work by itself and immediately, in order for your SIM card from a modem (and not a tablet and a smartphone, there’s another story!) The iota will work inside an arbitrary modem, you need to do the following :

1. Unlock the modem if it is tied to the operator (flashing is not required!).
2. Insert a SIM card and ensure that it connects to the base station and registers with the Yota network.
   
   • To do this, you need to make sure that there is LTE coverage from iota (3G does not fit!), Here is a coverage map , but the actual coverage is greater, you need to check the terrain;
   • make sure that the modem works on LTE iota frequencies: band-7;
   • and transfer the modem to 4G mode.
   
   
3. Establish a connection using the correct parameters.

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Now in order.

Unlock

The general advice is: find your modem at w3bsit3-dns.com and follow the instructions there. For the aforementioned Huawei E3272 (aka Megaphone M100-4, MTS 824F, 824FT, Beeline E3272) on Habré there is an average usefulness text on this topic , and in general there is a lot of information in the network, especially in a special branch on w3bsit3-dns.com . I will give a brief version of the instructions with my additions.

I prefer to do all the following operations using AT commands . Under linux (and probably any other unix) this is done according to this instruction , and in windows according to this .

1. Find out the IMEI modem: it is written on it, but you can enter the AT-command ATI and copy from there
2. If you are paranoid, like me, then you collect a program to generate unlock-codes from source codes (and even read them, so that no crap will run). If you need simpler, then here are the binaries and even the web service .
3. The verbatim quote: “enter our 15-digit IMEI and press“ Calc ”, in the window the utility will generate us our Flash / Unlock codes. Flash code is needed for modem flashing, Unlock for unlocking! In our Huawei E3272 modem, the unlock code by the new algorithm, i.e. v201 code ".
4. The manual says: "Insert the SIM-card of another operator, open the modem control program, when requesting the unlock code, enter the received code." Since I am under Linux, and I didn’t understand what this "modem control program" is, I simply entered the AT command AT^CARDLOCK=" " .

Switch to 4G mode

After that, the modem is ready, insert any SIM card and work. But, of course, except for Yota, which will not register your SIM card on the network until the modem is in the “LTE only” mode. The thing is that as they said in Yota:

we have no roaming in Russia at all and we have our own LTE base stations. There are 3G stations that are used in conjunction with Megaphone, but this has nothing to do with the modem.

To do this, we use the AT command again (see the list of commands and their meaning, for example, on w3bsit3-dns.com ). Enter AT^SYSCFGEX="03",3fffffff,2,4,7fffffffffffffff,,

Correct settings

As suggested in the support of Yota, for this you need to enter a standard dial-up number *99# and enter an access point (APN): internet.yota (for some devices this can also be yota.ru , that is, you need to check this option). Username and password can be left blank.

Actually, everything. Then you can use the modem, insert it into the router, and enjoy the Internet from Yota. Thanks for attention.