When will Vodafone support SMS over Wifi Calling?

[m1kegibson]

When will Vodafone come out of the dark ages and finally implement SMS over wifi calling?

Given Wifi Calling spec (voWIFI/GAN/UMA) incorporates SMS (and MMS) support, why is Vodafone's implementation limited to voice calls only - did they buy cheap kit off the back of a lorry perhaps?

[PedroA]

Hello Mark (from Vodafone).

Alas this statement "We’re sorry there’s been a delay getting this up and running, but should be available to handsets using the most up to date software." is very imprecise.

Which handsets and which operating system versions will you enable SMS via Wifi Calling for?

My wife has a Samsung S9 which will never get Android 11. Her phone can't even be upgraded to Android 10.

Will she never be able to send/receive an SMS via Wifi, once our suresignal is turned off?

Where is your webpage with the details about this feature and the details of what devices and operating system versions will be supported?

What rights for terminating our contracts do I have?

[Mark]

I'm sorry to see your wife is struggling to use our WiFi Calling service, you can find more information on doing this through our online support pages. If you've followed the steps there and she's still unable to add this, lets us know what error message is she seeing and we'll be happy to help 😊

[PedroA]

Mark et al,

My wife's phone can do wifi calling ok already - that's not the point and is not what I was asking about.

The point is that I want Vodafone to declare on their website, in an easy to find place:

1. Which phones and which operating system versions will be able to do SMS via wifi calling.

2. What contract termination mechanism / no cancellation fee you will offer as a result of Suresignal being discontinued if you have an older phone that Vodafone SMS via wifi calling won't support.

Mark - hopefully you can point us at such a webpage, or explain why Vodafone haven't created one already. Furthermore, you might want to get it ready for when the BBC 'You and Yours' or other more mainstream journalists come asking questions.

[Andyrobbo]

Hahahahaha pedroA calm down a bit. There are more important problems in the world at the moment.

If you dislike Vodafone so much, just cancel your account and while you’re at it, buy your wife a new phone!

[RoD0]

Regarding @Mark's comment: "If you're struggling to use this, pop us a message through one of our social channels and we'll be happy to take a look into this for you"

My interpretation: if you make enough fuss then Vodafone will waiver early exit fees so you can move providers, because they know they will loose a court case or an ombudsman appeal if you push it that far.  Obviously, they are not going to broadcast this fact because for 99.9% of people it will not be worth the hassle and they will just wait for their existing contract to end or get a new phone.

[Roy_B]

SMS working (S20+, Android 11).  Not MMS though....  Outgoing MMS seems to just hang.  Incoming MMS, you can see you've received something, but then it just hangs trying to download.

So not 100% there, but definitely progress.

[Enlli]

Why would you use MMS on an S20 equipped with RCS. which is better and works over Wifi? 

[luffviolin]

Well I guess you would want to receive MMS over Wi-Fi but I think I need to explore RCS. I have a couple of questions. If using RCS app on Android (Samsung) will I still get text messages and MMS sent by a user such as my Medical Centre or bank? Is RCS just between RCS users or am I missing something? A simple explanation would help.

[Roy_B]

It's not so much a matter of what I want to use, so much as what the person sending chooses to use.

If the sender doesn't have RCS (and remember, no iPhone has RCS ) and they send a photo using their normal messaging app, it will come through as an MMS, and if I'm out of coverage, I won't get it.

[Roy_B]

@luffviolin No impact on the ability to receive normal SMS.

RCS works pretty much exactly like Apple's iMessage, if you know how that works on an iPhone.

RCS is only used if both the sender and the recipient have RCS enabled - otherwise it uses SMS (or MMS) as normal.  Also, if RCS sending fails (e.g. recipient temporarily has no data connection) it will prompt you to ask if you want to resend as SMS/MMS - or you can change it in settings to automatically resend (which is what I do).

Pretty much only works with the Google or Samsung SMS apps.  (I use the Google Messages SMS app, so I *don't* turn on RCS in the phone's settings, but instead enable it in the Google Messages app settings).If you use Google Messages as your SMS client then SMS Backup and Restore is supposed to correctly back up RCS messages, too, although I've not tested this yet.