Could you tell me which city you're in? I'd like to try and see if I can trick it into letting me turn it on.
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AT&T WiFi Calling Now Available for Some iOS 9 Users
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Clearly you've never flown out of JFK and sat in line on the tarmac for 2 hours. Or landed and wanted to turn your phone on and check email while taxing to the gate. With the exception of Southwest Airlines, no US carrier's internet is activated while on the ground... so not sure how one would be connected to WiFi on the ground in the plane on UA, DL, or AA.
Anyhow, the issue is it's odd to not have coverage on the ground while in the aircraft in major cities at the airport.
We have a Microcell on my account for when I added my dad to the plan - he lives in a rural area and gets a dot of service on a good day in the house, so it was a no-brainier when he gave up the really unreliable Frontier landline service - after a few months, the voice-only service and Microcell paid for itself and worked well enough. Five years later he has an iPhone 5S and is still mostly happy with the Microcell - he's moving and won't need it soon though.
As long as your phone supports it, Wi-Fi calling should eliminate the need for such a device and basically does the same thing, except that the step of faking a 3G/4G signal to your phone is removed.
Obviously this is still very "beta" as a whole, but I could see it as a way to get rid of the Microcell my dad uses if it works on the 5S. In my tests where I live, wifi calling kicks on almost immediately when I flip on airplane mode and then turn back on wifi (simulating a poor cellular signal) - I'll test more tomorrow, but it does seem to work instantaneously. You can't specify what networks to use it on, but it seems like AT&T's implementation on the iPhone is always a backup when cell service is poor, so if you connect to a lousy public wifi hotspot, you won't miss calls.
If I had to guess, this probably works with Multipath TCP to establish two VoIP connections, one on VoLTE and one on Wi-Fi, so that if either drops, the call can be continued on the other connection. Since VoLTE is essentially VoIP, this can be done. HSPA+ and earlier do not use VoIP connections, which would make the handoff trickier. This is my hypothesis for the problem. Take it or leave it.
Is there any indication on the phone that you're using Wi-Fi calling? Does it say "Wi-Fi" where it normally says AT&T or anything like that?
You've obviously never sat in the "penalty box" next to the runway for an hour or more waiting for delays to clear at your destination. I've done that plenty and every time I have, the plane's Wi-Fi has not been activated yet. Even if it had been, I would've preferred to use cellular service anyway. Who wouldn't choose 20+ Mbps down over cellular if you have a signal as opposed to 1 to 2 Mbps down (if you're lucky) over the plane's Wi-Fi?
If I had to guess, this probably works with Multipath TCP to establish two VoIP connections, one on VoLTE and one on Wi-Fi, so that if either drops, the call can be continued on the other connection. Since VoLTE is essentially VoIP, this can be done. HSPA+ and earlier do not use VoIP connections, which would make the handoff trickier. This is my hypothesis for the problem. Take it or leave it.
So then how does T-Mobile do it? They were offering WiFi calling everywhere long before they had widespread LTE coverage.
Yep - when I flip on Airplane Mode and then enable Wi-Fi, I get the airplane icon and Wi-Fi signal waves briefly, and then 'AT&T Wi-Fi' appears when I can make calls - I'll report what it does when I go to work and lose an AT&T tower in favor of Wi-Fi calling tomorrow:
My theory as to why AT&T's implementation currently prefers the cel tower is that this is a new service and it's not been fully vetted and tested yet.
Do we really want someone to be unable to make an emergency call because they were trying to call through WiFi and something was broken on AT&T's end? They're playing it safe; cel network first, then WiFi only if the cel network is having issues.
This may change once it's widely deployed and the bugs have been worked out.
Do we really want someone to be unable to make an emergency call because they were trying to call through WiFi and something was broken on AT&T's end? They're playing it safe; cel network first, then WiFi only if the cel network is having issues.
This may change once it's widely deployed and the bugs have been worked out.
Interesting, you're on the WiFi even though you have two dots of cellular reception.
I wonder what the threshold for the switchover is. I'd love to find out all this stuff for myself but am still wary about putting iOS 9 beta on my daily driver phone.
I don't know how T-Mobile is doing it, but it would seem AT&T's implementation is somewhat different. Based on the limitations, my explanation would make sense.
You don't need a lot of bandwidth on the users end to support higher quality audio codecs. I run g722 at work for intra site calls and it's around 80k per call. People at work actually don't like the high quality and sometimes ask to have it turned off.
A quick Google search shows that att uses the amr-wb codec and on the high end its using about 40kbps
Cause it WAS NOT Enabled for ANY Carier besides T-Mobile in iOS 8 hence the tweak and support for it being introduced now
Why would they charge for something that unloads data from their network to someone else's, and gives them another excuse as to why they can't expand coverage?
Oh right, because it's AT&T. So who knows.
iOS 9 itself is supposed to work with iPhone 4S and newer last I checked....
however WiFi calling to be fair wasn't on iDevices till they hit T-Mobile's network
Try forcing it on Like so
Note: to do this you may NEED To make use of multitasking and the swipe up menu. I went to
Setting>Phone>WiFi Calling
Then swiped up control center turned Airplane mode on then turned on WiFi
Then clicked Enable WiFi calling and boom the steps popped up and I was able to force WiFi calling
Have made 3 WiFi calls thus far and loving it! Great quality so far on home WiFi will be messing with it more since it arguably factors into Beta Testing usage
1: improper English and sentence structure
2: It didn't always work well on T-Mobile and had issues on a few phones or Service plans. It will be interesting to see how this works out with AT&T and if it forces some improvements with T-Mobile WiFi calling
It could be 1 of several factors or a combination of factors. My experience with T-Mobile WiFi has been mostly hit or miss and underwhelming
Sounds like there may be an issue with your microcell , your iPhone software, your ISP or the carrier software/firmware OR Some combination thereof
Took me a lot of hassle to get my Microcell to work when I needed it though partially the MCell was needed to help prevent minute overages something that is no longer an issue thankfully as unlimited minutes has become a pretty available industry standard nowadays
Signal still tends to be an issue However being where there is low signal and usable WiFi outside of ones home could be a potential dice roll or crapshoot
In theory it shouldn't mess with your plan it's in the experimental/Beta phase right now and you're technically using the service of what WiFi you're connecting to. You may need to forcibly enable it as has been explained in a few posts here
Assuming iPhone even works as a "GoPhone" it should work in theory you just may need to forcibly activate it
Not sure about performance, but I just bought a MicroCell. Feh. Had I known ...