WiFi Calling unreliable

[dnmurphy]

Wasn't sure what board as nothing seems to fit, this seems closest.

I have an iphone SE on contract with Vodafone.  I have a poor cellphone signal at my home ad used to have sure signal which worked until the box died and now they no longer sell it.

So I have switched wficalling on.  It works intermittently,  At the moment I have 1 bar on the cell signal, and 3 on the wifi connected signal.  WFicall is showing.

I tried calling BT (as my home provider) using this and with the signal strength.  I gt through went through options then the call died.  It happened three times when I gaveup.  I have  BT Home Hub 5.

Also sometimes the WiFicall text simply disappears.  My friend lives here and has an iPhone of some kind and also can't make reliable wificall calls.  if I move around to a place where the cell signal is better than I can reliably make calls, although I don't think via wificall.  The problem appears to be that WiFi call is unreliable.

Any ideas why this should be?  I did try setting airplane mode but it made no difference.

I live in North Norfolk between Sheringham and Cromer.  We have been told that the signal is good here, and it is fine down the road, but there is a very poor signal spot at my house.

[Andy]

Hi @dnmurphy 👋 WiFi calling is designed to only activate when it deems your normal phone signal to be poor, it will then become unavailable once the network signal becomes stronger, this is why you may see the option disappear. If the call is cutting off part way through a call when using WiFi calling this could be caused by either a poor WiFi connection or some other device in the area possibly interfering with your WiFi signal. Do you generally find you have a stable WiFi connection for your other devices?

[dnmurphy]

Thanks for responding. 

The connection to other devised is generally reliable.

We have noticed slowdown where laptops are using resource hungry applications such as video streaming or games, but this has not happened when calls are being lost.

We have a BT Home HUb 5 and I have ordered the more powerful smart hub to see if that will improve things,

Thanks for the comment about why we might lose the wificalling - the Vodafone signal is very poor where my house is - we must be stuck in a dead zone because the signal in the area generally isn't bad.

cheers

david

[Andy]

Hopefully you do see an improvement with the new smart hub @dnmurphy If you would like could you pop over your postcode, or if you prefer just enter this in the personal information section of your profile, we can then take a look at the signal in your area 😊

[dnmurphy]

NR27 9QB

[Mark]

Hi @dnmurphy, it sounds like you phone is trying to connect using the mobile signal and as this is patchy in your area, this could be causing your calls to drop. So we can confirm if this is the case, try turning your mobile service off in your settings, try making a call just using your WiFi calling and let us know if this is any better.

[dnmurphy]

Thanks for the response, I tried by switching to airplane mode and it seemed to make no difference -is that what you mean?

[Anonymous]

The problem with WiFi calling is that it is very dependant on the WiFi you have.  So first up, it often needs access to a (steady) stream of data, the "chunking" approach networks take in regards to data does not work so well for voice!  Routers normally manage this as best they can through their QoS settings.  You can also have a potential issue with beamforming trying to get your connection a good as possible since it's often not as fast as you might think.

If you are intending to make a call, then odd as it may seem, temporarily reducing the amount of data other devices are using may help.

*Much of the resolution of the issue probably resides with your broadband provider BT.

**Mesh systems and extenders, unless they are specifically set up for the purpose, can make this usage situation worse and not better!

[pobpob]

Hi

I am interested to hear if router config is a way to optimise the wifi calling.

I have exactly the same issues. 1 bar of 3G or 4G which meant reliance on Suresignal in my home. That was reliable, but now it is swtiched off the WiFi Calling is unreliable.  I get the text badge on my iPhone screen disappearing regularly, and I often discover I have missed incoming calls.  If I should try to call out it can sometimes take 4 or 5 goes to get through.  Outgoing calls also suffer from voice drop out or fading of my voice (but unbeknown to me).   The voice clarity is fine.

A workaround would be to go into Airplane mode whilst indoors - that seems to isolate the 3g signal... but you have to remember to switch it off again once you leave the house.

If this was an issue of the 4G over-riding the wifi calling then that is not optimal - surely an intermittent 1 bar on 4G should never over-ride an 'always strong' wifi signal where I am 9 feet from the BT Smart Hub2 router on a 150meg internet connection?  That over-riding doesn't explain the voice cut outs during a call.

It' shouldn't need airplane mode and paranoia about missing calls though.

So I have neighbour who also uses wifi Calling on BT Mobile and he does not see flakiness even though 4g coverage is equally flaky.  So I am minded to move to BT Mobile where they may have a better implementation of wificalling.

[dnmurphy]

I ended up getting a new phone as the old one decayed.  the new one is working pretty well - iPhone SE was iPhone 6.  with my old phone I could never get satnav with google maps to work properly and other things never really worked well.  So in my case I think the phone was just ageing and decaying.  Thanks everyone for the responses.  But it is disappointing they got rid of suresignal which worked better and very well (until the boxes burnt out - typically after 1-2 years).