vodafone wificall cannot send sms

[pocpot]

Just got my new iPhone 6s today. Needed wifi calling...the area I live in get no signal at all. So phoned voda got wifi calling all set up. Great stuff......

So im able to make a call. Problem is none of my sms messages will send. I cannot find any info on the Internet nor anyone who has had the same problem.

I've gone upstairs and leant out the window, turned off wifi calling, sms sends fine.

Anyone had the same problem / found a solution?

Cheers

[devonbloke]

Yeah right.

Not enabling SMS over WC is showing utter contempt for the customer.

It's bad enough not having a signal.

Then, hey, wow WiFi calling..... oh wait, no SMS.

So so so annoying it would be better not to have wifi calling.

Why the hell do we need to look at alternative solutions?

There's one right there, that's transparent and seemless, it's SMS over WiFi calling. EE have done it. Are Vodafone incapable because I wouldn't have thought so but I'm beginning to wonder.

[pocpot]

The point is the sms service for this thread. I'm good with tech and different apps to perform different tasks. I use a fair few different messaging apps for different groups of friends. The fact is I had 2 contracts with EE and used the wifi sms feature all the time because like @taytos I have no signal at home..with any network. So wifi calling / sms is a contract selling point for me. I still use sms a lot and so does my mother who ain't tech savvy and has an old phone which might just about have snake on it.

The wifi part aside..voda are shocking. They still owe me £150 from over billing. They sent me a suresignal FREE but didn't credit my account. Instead they charged me twice for it. You try explaining anything on the phone to them....good luck is all I can say.

If I knew it was going to be this much hassle I would have paid the extra £10 month and stayed with EE.

[jeffkinn]

Apart from the billing muck up which is terrible, does the Sure Signal actually work for you?

[GreenLantern]

Sure Signal isn't really a solution though its a bodge.

Whereas properly implemented GAN with SMS as well as calls would be the right way to go about it.

I've emailed the exec office with a link to this thread so they can at least give me an official response as to why it was decided that they shouldn't implement the full set of GAN technologies.

[jeffkinn]

---

@GreenLantern wrote:

Sure Signal isn't really a solution though its a bodge.

---

A bodge? On what basis do you make that assessment? It a solution that works for many thousands of clients over a number of years. It is very far from a bodge.

[GreenLantern]

Femtocells are plugging holes in your own operators weak coverage and using your connectivity back to the internet to extend their coverage and then they charge you your usual billing rates to use the service ?

What part of that isn't a bodge ?

Anyway we're going off topic here.

Still waiting for a reply from the exec office, almost two weeks after they promised me they'd give me an answer to two questions;

1) Why is their WiFi Calling implementation (GAN) not the full technical spec laid out to include SMS.

2) Why are One-Net customers not allowed access to the WiFi Calling implementation.

I guess I'm in for a long wait, he didn't seem too hopeful about either being answered by the teams.

[jeffkinn]

---

@GreenLantern wrote:

Femtocells are plugging holes in your own operators weak coverage and using your connectivity back to the internet to extend their coverage and then they charge you your usual billing rates to use the service ?

What part of that isn't a bodge ?

---

A bodge is defined as "A quick and dirty job, something done very hastily. Make it look good for the next day or two and if it falls down after that, it's alright."

So no part of it is a bodge. It's actually a highly sophisticated and technical solution to the problem of poor signals inside buildings. It would be better if such weak spots didn't exist but the current state of mobile phone technology, together with planning restrictions that restricts the number and placment of masts, means that a strong signal inside all areas structures is impossible. 

As to your questions, you won't get any answers. The company is not going to justify its business decisions to you or me or any customer. We either accept and use the service they provide or we don't and move on somewhere else.

[GreenLantern]

I'm not entirely sure you should speak on behalf of Vodafone UK.

Thats a horrendous thing for a company to actually say to their customers or even come close to saying to their customers.

If you worked in a PR/Marketing department or even a front line customer facing role and officially said that, you'd be reprimanded, possibly even sacked depending on the stages they have to go through to sack you. Which in reality brings in to question whether community champions are even a good idea for a large company, as now the staff have almost given up here, does it make sense for non internally trained people to be given almost quasi-official status to talk on behalf of the company ? I don't know, we definitely wouldn't do it where we work for exactly the reason I just pointed out - that someone would mistake what you just wrote for something official from Vodafone. The media would have a field day with it.

I hear you on the femtocells, but the whole technology was brought into being as a way for network operators to pacify customers where they simply couldn't be bothered to extend their coverage. It was brought about after the 3G auctions and the networks weren't too happy with spending anymore than they had to on rolling out their networks. Something they're begrudgingly having to do now, partly since EE UK become such a giant with its combined network and actually wanting to invest in infrastructure (until BT gets stuck into them and then I'm sure that situation will change).

[jeffkinn]

I'm entirely sure that I shouldn't and I don't speak on behalf of Vodafone. And only someone with a vague connection to any facts would mistake something a customer says on a customer forum for an official announcement or assume that we have any kind of quasi official status. We don't any more than you do. Our opinions have no more force or credibility than yours or anyone else's

Have you ever looked at the O2 or EE communities, or the Apple Discussion forums? Where customers tell other customers all of the time how those organisations work or give their opinions on those organisations and how other customers might act to get the best result from their dealings with those companies? It's a very common method of operating a forum.

The very fact that I don't work for Vodafone in any capacity allows me to say things that Vodafone employees could not and do not say.

[GreenLantern]

I guess we can agree to disagree