[asterisk-dev] chan_datacard / GSM channel feedback

[Alexander Heinz]

Hi!

I have been playing with chan_datacard and Asterisk 1.6.2.0-rc3 using a 
a Vodafone K3520 USB UMTS stick aka Huawei E169.

The good news for me is that I have finally found an affordable way to 
connect Asterisk to the GSM network. The voice quality seems to be fine. 
So I would like to thank Artem (the author of chan_datacard) for his work.

However I ran into a problem. It is not possible to call a number that 
contains the character #, e.g.

	exten => _017X.,1,Dial(Datacard/datacard/#31#${EXTEN},60,g)

(#31# is the GSM code for withholding the number)

I can hear an announcement of my mobile phone network provider that 
tells me that the number is invalid (although it is not). So my guess is 
that Asterisk is not actually transmitting the character #.

The same thing is probably true for the character *, but I did not 
verify that.

I can think of many useful applications that require the use of GSM 
codes, so I would like to ask if someone can tell me whether this is a 
bug in chan_datacard (and if it will be fixed) or if there is another 
way to send these GSM codes.

Thank you!

Best regards,
Alex