New 5G phone but Vodafone say it will not work once 3g turned off

[Hon90U]

Vodafone have sent me a message saying my 6 month old phone (release date for it 19th of July 2023) will not work for calls once you switch off the 3G network.  I double checked it's IMEI on Vodafones website which also says it will not work.

Obviously my phone, an Honor 90 (model REA-NX9) supports most of the bands for 4G and 5G and even uses 4G for data, so it should work for calls.

Can you tell me how to resolve this?  Do I need a new SIM or do you need to enable VOLTE or something for my model of phone on your network? I remember when the Oneplus 3 came out VOLTE would not work on some networks because they needed to whitelist the type of phone or something similar.

Here are the Honor 90 specs that shows it supports the 4g and 5g bands:

Technology	GSM / CDMA / HSPA / CDMA2000 / LTE / 5G
2G bands	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 - SIM 1 & SIM 2
	CDMA 800
3G bands	HSDPA 800 / 850 / 900 / 1700(AWS) / 1900 / 2100
	CDMA2000 1x
4G bands	1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 19, 28, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41
5G bands	1, 5, 8, 28, 41, 77, 78 SA/NSA
Speed	HSPA, LTE-A, 5G

[Hon90U]

Hi @Gemma ,

I'm afraid i'm not getting anywhere with social media support apart from them telling me my phone should be ok because it supports 4g and 5g and not to worry when it's obvious they don't fully understand the difference between 4G data and 4G phone calls/VoLTE.

From what I can work out, they think because it supports 4G for data that my phone is supported, without understanding phone calls over 4G/VoLTE are different.  Despite trying to explain this, i'm making no headway. I have twice asked for a second line support to get someone who might understand the difference but so many hours later im going through circles.  I have tried shop support, phone support, forum support, social media support and i'm no closer to getting a proper answer or solution officially. 

So I have well meaning but not helpful support from everywhere without anyone being able to actually tell me if I will get VoLTE or fall back to inferior 2g for calls on a brand new phone good spec phone.

[Mark]

I'm sorry to see you're not getting the answer you're looking for via our Social Media team @Hon90U, I'll look into this and provide feedback to help the agents involved to gain a better understanding. Apologies for any confusion.

As Our website, @Gemma, and @Nabs have all advised. If your phone has been purchased from a third party, and not directly from Vodafone, we cannot guarantee that it will be compatible with 4G/WiFi Calling through ourselves. When our 3G service is switched off, if your phone isn't supported for 4G calls, it will revert to our 2G network for these connections. You will however still be able to use a 4/5G data connection via our network.

[Janet4668]

Same problem with Honor 70 5G. Moving to ID network who are a lot more open and allow WiFi calling