how do you get the phone's MCC and MNC in Android?

The only way I've found of retrieving MCC and MNC is by overriding an activity's onConfigurationChanged method, as such:

public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration config)
{
    super.onConfigurationChanged(config);
    DeviceData.MCC = "" + config.mcc;
    DeviceData.MNC = ""  +config.mnc;
}

However, I need this data as soon as the app starts and can't wait for the user to switch the phone's orientation or equivalent to trigger this method. Is there a better way to access the current Configuration object?

Solution 1:

The TelephonyManager has a method to return the MCC+MNC as a String (getNetworkOperator()) which will do you what you want. You can get access it via:

protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

    TelephonyManager tel = (TelephonyManager) getSystemService(Context.TELEPHONY_SERVICE);
    String networkOperator = tel.getNetworkOperator();

    if (!TextUtils.isEmpty(networkOperator)) {
        int mcc = Integer.parseInt(networkOperator.substring(0, 3));
        int mnc = Integer.parseInt(networkOperator.substring(3));
    }
}

Solution 2:

You do know there are two MCC/MNC's for an active phone? (One is the country code and carrier id for the Sim card, the other is for the network/cell tower in use.)

If the getResources().getConfiguration().mcc is not empty in airplane mode, it's the Sim value TelephonyManager.getSimOperator(), not the tower value TelephonyManager.getNetworkOperator().

I don't know which the OP wants, but Answer 3 will give him different results than his original code if the getConfiguration is really the Sim values.

Solution 3:

getResources().getConfiguration().mcc is a bad choice because it returns an integer, hence compromising valid values such as 01, or 044. Clearly integer is not a good option for this.

See details in Mobile_Network_Code

Update: in Australia, we verified a wrong case here. The getNetworkOperator returns different value from getSimOperator, where the latter is correct.

See details in Android doc: TelephonyManager