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Carrier WHEN IS VERIZON GETTING WIFI CALLING?
- Thread starter jack 011
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I thought I heard this too but they have less than two months to do it now and there has been no word on it other than that one vague statement awhile back. I don't have high hopes for it being out anytime soon.
I'm in a similar situation. I can live without Wi-Fi calling in my house, but I still want it. Like, I get a halfway workable signal and calls don't usually drop but it would be really nice to have since I only get like 1 bar of LTE in my house, it still gets like 10mbps but it's weak enough where it occasionally drops to 3G for no reason but I can force it back onto LTE by toggling airplane mode on then off. But yeah, nowhere in my house gets better signal than -114dbm. In the bathroom it goes to -126dbm sometimes and I have no clue how because usually LTE drops out completely below -120. Other times it says No Service.
You can turn airplane mode on and then enable wifi calling and still get all your texts and calls right? I'm assuming that's how it works but I'm scared I have misunderstood it, like if you have to still be connected to a carrier so the phone knows what carrier to talk to over wifi or something. I just want this to conserve a little battery, I rarely get above 4-6 hours on my iPhone 6.
We're talking about wifi calling, NOT VOLTE; they're different.
Why even wait? T-Mobile covers your ETF right now and if you are in the iphone bandwagon, you can get on the new Jump On Demand and effectively pay about ~$100+ less than the retail price of the new iphone 6s.
I just moved over from ATT to T-Mobile, at work where I sit, I can't get any mobile signal where I sit, but I use the T-Mobile LTE signal booster and I am fully lit up(Work wifi has the Wifi Calling UDP ports blocked). At home, the free Asus router provides a solid signal for wifi calling. I am sure I will miss out on ATT signal when I am traveling about, but for the vast majority of my needs T-Mobile works just great.
Further at least where I live it seems like VoLTE has been enabled as I can distinctly hear better phone conversations with other T-mobile users being distinctly clear.
Twin Cities Metro here. The answer to your question: My house. My neighborhood in a large suburb has marginal coverage. My house is stucco, which is basically concrete squished into chicken wire. That acts as a sort of Faraday cage. I can't make a call over 90 seconds without it getting dropped. I bought a Verizon extender to solve the problem, but wifi calling would have worked easier and cheaper.
My last company had to buy multiple extenders to get service inside a manufacturing plant in a very urban area in Minneapolis for similar reasons. The signal has to pretty strong to penetrate certain structures and Verizon's network is wide but not deep. Both locations have great wifi so this would solve the issue.
Of note, ATT works great in both locations because the signal is strong enough to penetrate the buildings.
Yeah, apparently I was ignorant to a entire plethora of situations in which this is true. Definitely learned a few things in this thread; first and foremost, to be grateful that I live in an area with great LTE and lots of wifi.
I don't have Verizon, but my mother and her husband do and have for years.
All I have to conclude by what I read, and what I hear is that Verizon is the most Pompous Ass company in the cellular business. They really think they are something special.
All I have to conclude by what I read, and what I hear is that Verizon is the most Pompous Ass company in the cellular business. They really think they are something special.
I work in a courthouse that has a lot of interior rooms. All of my coworkers are on Verizon -- they can't get cell signal anywhere in the building except their own offices (which are along outside walls)... Other places result in drops or no service. I'm on T-Mobile and with Wi-Fi calling, I get phone calls everywhere -- even the jail (in the basement).
No Verizon coverage at my in-law's house, or my office. I know I'm in the minority, however.
2 weeks ago, one person on my verizon plan went to a verizon store and purchased a new flip phone on my plan, I told him to buy it out right and that was the only way now, for him. I received a call from the store for my password and was assured my bill or anything was not going to change.
So an hour later, he calls me and tells me they gave him the phone for free, it only cost him $10 (for tax).
I hung up from him and went online to check my account and BAM, my data plan was reduced and his monthly payment for the phone was on my bill.
I called him and told him to go back, I called verizon and spoke to a supervisor at the same time he was on his way back.
He called me when he got to the store, the person at the store said this was not supposed to happen, I told the verizon supervisor to call the store and talk to that person (the manager asked me if the store person would verify they were not supposed to change anything) This was extremely disappointing to me as if the person at the store did not admit then basically verizon was going to tell me to go and screw!
So after 3 hours on the phone with the manager, she came back and had to request an older plan that I was originally on, to be put back on, and told me it will take up to a week. BUT in the mean time I had .2Gb (200meg) of data left for the month (2 days left) due to the plan change and I should think about upgrading my data just in case I go over, as I told her for the 50th time at least "None of this was my fault and should have never happened" so I am not paying for more data when I had plenty to begin with.
So we hung up, 1 day later my plan was changed, then 4 days later I am back on the phone getting my monthly credits they removed from my bill.
I told the verizon rep (and this is absolutely the truth) "I always have billing issues and problems after a phone change with them (none of this happened at the apple store last year, due to me not getting the phone from verizon) and always had for the ~20 years I have been with them and like unusual, it is always in their favor (meaning more money in their pockets), matter in fact I know of no one that has ever had a problem with verizon and verizon screwed up in the customers favor, never!"
Of course the person did not care, nor did they care I have now spent 4 hours of my time fixing their problems with my bill (they would not give me a penny more). I have a ETF of $850 right now and every day that goes by, I think of just paying it and getting out. But the 2 others on my account pay me yearly and are paid up to 12-31-2015 so then I will at the end of the year or wait for next year to drop verizon and go to t-mobile.
Just for the record verizon needs 5g that they are coming out with as I have done several tests comparing t-mobile and version (with coworkers, same phone), and t-mobile data network is always double or more faster than verizon's (at least where I use it). T-mobile also has better signal than verizon, though there was a couple places verizon had more signal but very few.
Just my 2 cents on verizon, I was with verizon since the bag phone.
I retired from Verizon a while back - first thing I did was signup w/AT&T.
i would move now except that i bought a new 6s full price on launch day (i was originally going to the do the iPhone Upgrade Program but wasn't going to deal with it after all the feedback from people who had tried earlier that day), not knowing that that didn't get me out of the rest of my contract even though i paid for the device. So there is really no point in switching to T-Mobile and buying another device just so they can pay off my $150 ETF for me. Also, i don't have a T-Mobile retail store in my state so i can't do Jump on demand even if i wanted to. It's fine...beginning of the year is when my contract is finally "up" so i'll just say good riddance at that time.
That's really interesting. I lived southwest of Minneapolis when I was in high school (2005-2009). I usually had pretty good service with my old flip phone on Verizon, but a friend of mine had Cingular at the time and her service would fluctuate. Although she was able to send texts at school on rare occasions when I got nothing inside (the building is solid brick and concrete). And then there was the dead spot in the middle of town where no one got service. But that was eight years ago or so, long before LTE and in the early days of 3G.
Yes, back in 1996 on my StarTac motorola I used to get good signal inside the house but when I was at the Mall at filene's basement I would drop signal on my Cellular one provider. But when I was at circuit city and Ame's signal would be strong on my cousins Bell Atlantic Nynex Mobile right up to the door and when we walked in it would just display no service.
But when I went to Hollywood video to rent my VHS tapes with my friend his nextel push to talk would still chirp inside even in the back wall where they kept all the new releases. Signal was good many times so I didn't really care I just return the tapes a few days later without rewinding them first.
I know, I was a rebel
If this doesn't happen soon - I'm leaving Verizon. Neither our home nor my Wife's office have very good service. We have network extenders in both locations and still suffer from dropped calls. Best of all, since the network extenders are 3G only, you have to disable VOLTE to get the phones to use the extender, so you lose out on that feature, unless you want to keep enabling and disabling. From what I've read about Wi-Fi calling on both ATT and T-Mobile, the quality is awesome and works fairly seamless. Not sure why so many people say it isn't needed.
That stinks. Definitely sounds like you aren't getting the best experience with Big Red. Can I ask why you're even still with them now? Not sure I would be. Actually, pretty certain I wouldn't be.
Yeah, it's very frustrating.
Our home and Wife's office seem to be the 2 anomalies in our city (Irvine, CA) that have poor coverage. When we're out and about, coverage is fine and no issues. I've tried ATT with similar issues at home/business and found their service outside wasn't as good as V. Plus, I would still have to deal with a microcell. Up until recently, our network extenders have worked fine. For some reason it has been our new iPhone 6S's that aren't playing nice. So it seems that WIFI calling would be a good reason to get rid of them. If V does enable WIFI calling, I would definitely stay, but at this point it might be time to move on.
Funny side note. Before getting the network extenders, I called V and was talking to the rep about the poor service. He asked what our home was made out of. I said, wood. He responded, does the wood have stucco - I said yes. "Oh, that's is probably the cause for the poor indoor reception." I said, frankly 95% of the homes in CA are made out of wood and stucco, if that was the case everyone would have an issue. SMH!
There are two (or maybe more, I don't know) types of stucco. One is somewhat pre-made while the other is wire with the plaster done in place. My understanding is that the latter is more expensive and less common these days. My house is the latter and it is the wire, not the plaster that causes the issue. It actually makes sense, it is basically a Faraday cage. Extender fixed my problems, but having to turn off VOLTE to get to get it to work REALLY sucks. This will be my last phone with Verizon if they don't get it together.
Just an FYI, if you have an iPhone, you can use WiFI calling now. Just download the Messages+ app.