[mahoward]

OK, this is a simple question that has devolved into a mini research project for me. We are trying to reconcile carrier billing info with active BlackBerry users, and are finding many SIM card accounts we are paying data plans for but we don't know who is using the device or where it is.

I use the BB Manager to find devices by carrier phone number which is easy most of the time, however many accounts (229 out of 1905 or about 12%) do not have the "phone number" field populated in BB Manager, these are the accounts I am trying to track down.

Results so far:

1. I have discovered through previous posts that the "My Number:" field at the top of the Phone app pulls directly from the SIM card's "Phone number" field. If present on the device, the "My Number:" field then populates the BB Manager account "Phone Number" field in the SQL database.

2. Interestingly, this number can be user edited via Options / Advanced / SIM Card / Edit SIM Phone Number. Also interestingly, it appears to be a display field only and does not change the phone number that the SIM card actually uses.

3. Normally this SIM Card "Phone Number" field is populated by the carrier during the provisioning process, and before they ship the SIM Card out. In some cases, however, they sloppily forget this step which results in a missing SIM card field, and thus an "Unknown Number" on the Phone app display, however the SIM & voice calling work just fine, as again the true number is encoded into the SIM and unrelated to the "Phone Number" SIM display field.

4. It is easy enough for the end user to edit and add their phone number if nonexistent, or change it if the number associated with the SIM is changed by the carrier.

Now, for my question:

I do not have the ability to track down each of these BlackBerry's with a missing Phone Number field and add it manually, and I do not want to bother our userbase with doing this task. Is there ANY WAY I can do this remotely by knowing just the phone number, either via a hack myself or having the carrier push something to the device's SIM card?

I have heard that dialing the number from another phone may populate the field, does anyone have experience with this method or any other method that may work in this scenario?

Also, if any of the above assumptions are incorrect feel free to provide updated info. Thanks!

[penguin3107]

Hmmm... I think I found another accounting problem...

You say "out of 1905" devices.... but then in your signature, you have:
BES 4.0.6.22 on Domino 7.0.2: 1252 Devices
BES 4.1.3.19 on Domino 7.0.2: 780 Devices

1252 + 780 = 2032 devices. That's 127 devices too many. ;)

[JSanders]

Originally Posted by mahoward

I have heard that dialing the number from another phone may populate the field, does anyone have experience with this method or any other method that may work in this scenario?

Not true. But if that were the case, don't you think the SIM card number on those missing a number would be set by now, unless no one had ever actually called that device?

[mahoward]

Yeah, but most if not all the accounts in question are also "data only" and voice barred, so they would never get a call anyway. I suppose in this case calling them would not be an option even if it did work as a hack.

Perhaps T-Mobile does not populate the phone number on the SIM if the account is to be data only, however we have many others that are populated and that are also voice barred so it is inconsistent...

[mahoward]

Hi penguin3107, we have 127 accounts on an EU Domain which is separate from the US Domain, which is what I am researching.

[penguin3107]

No need to explain... I was just making a joke.

[x14]

I've looked into this but never gone through the process of doing it but I'm told there's a way for the carrier (at least with Cingular) to push the number into the SIM.

[Frank Castle]

I would ask your carrier for a list of all accounts they have for you .. then you can cross reference .. I hate that carriers track everything by phone # and not the damn PIN!!

[bertiebassett]

Originally Posted by mahoward

I do not have the ability to track down each of these BlackBerry's with a missing Phone Number field and add it manually, and I do not want to bother our userbase with doing this task. Is there ANY WAY I can do this remotely by knowing just the phone number, either via a hack myself or having the carrier push something to the device's SIM card?

Not that I'm aware off - I think you need to get the numbers manually entered into the device to then populate on the BES. I can't recollect write now if you can get the sim card number from the BES manager - if you can then dump this and the list of pins to a file, then get the sim card number to mobile number lookup list from your carrier and do a lookup.

Other options would involve your user base. Personally I'd turn off all devices that havent' contacted in 60 days and then either
a) message the user base to pass information back to hq
b) turn off all the devices, in that way you'll definately get them calling in

[bertiebassett]

Originally Posted by jletendre

I would ask your carrier for a list of all accounts they have for you .. then you can cross reference .. I hate that carriers track everything by phone # and not the damn PIN!!

like erm why...the thing that controls access to the services on the network is mobile number/sim card number..not the device pin.

I don't know about you but I've had the same mobile number for 10 years and during that time about 3 different sim cards but probably used it in a minimum of 50 different devices...

[Frank Castle]

Exactly .. the carrier tracks by the phone # and everything on the BES tracks by the PIN. The issue is he doesn't have the phone #'s listing so there's no way to cross reference .. once you get a couple thousand blackberry it's a nightware keeping track of all this stuff.

BES 4.1 and berrystats have been a godsend assisting with the asset managment side of this.

[mattk0]

I'm seeing the same issue, and would love to find a way to have the number show in the BES. I've been able to push the service books to a few users and that works for about 4-5% of the non-reporting numbers, but that doesn't help a bunch.

[mahoward]

Originally Posted by bertiebassett

Not that I'm aware off - I think you need to get the numbers manually entered into the device to then populate on the BES. I can't recollect write now if you can get the sim card number from the BES manager - if you can then dump this and the list of pins to a file, then get the sim card number to mobile number lookup list from your carrier and do a lookup.

You know, it appears in the BB Mgr 4.1 that there is a field for SIM ID, however it is not populated. I wonder if future versions of the device software will populate it. I assume this would be the IMSI #, and not the IMEI # which is tied to the hardware and not the SIM. If it is indeed the IMSI then I would be able to correlate that back to phone number easily.

In the meantime I have instructed our local BB setup folks to manually ensure this field is populated on all SIMs down the road, hopefully this will alleviate the issue.

[x14]

The BES 4.1 EA process populates the SIM ID.

SIM ID for BB from the BES 4.0 days will not show. You have to do EA on BES 4.1.

[mahoward]

Thanks x14, I just discovered that! It seems that as long as you activate on the 4.1 server it will come over. This doesn't solve the core issue but is very helpful... now I just have to get T-Mobile to give me a report correlating SIM ID's with phone numbers... we'll see how that goes.