topic Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince in Get Support

VoLTE - Terrible experince

feenerjames — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 18:09:09 GMT

I'm planning a trip to the US soon, and had not yet been migrated to VoLTE. As I intend to purchase an add on, I submitted at ticket requesting migration to VoLTE. Within the same I was informed VoLTE had been enabled, and that I needed to restart my phone. I was instructed that I must go to my cellular data options settings and enable a toggle switch for VoLTE on my iPhone XS running iOS 16.4.1. This is where it all went downhill.

My phone did not have a toggle switch, however, I did notice that my calls remained on LTE and didn't switch to 3G as it had in the past. I asked the CS agent if this meant VoLTE was working, but I was told if I did not have the VoLTE toggle switch, something was wrong.

Over the next few days, and multiple emails back and form with the CS Agent at tech support ticket was created and I was told a would be contacted in 72 hours. In the meantime, I had a support call scheduled with Apple.

Apple reviewed my phone and confirmed my initial suspicion - the LTD I was seeing in my status bar when making a call meant the VoLTE migration was successful.

The next day, I received a text from text support who for some reason believe the issue was that I could not make or receive a call at all. After clarifying the issue, the tech support confirmed that the LTD status bar when making calls meant everything was working.

After the closed the ticket, I've now just discovered that I can't make any calls at all (I get a call failed error message). I'm assuming something was changed when tech support looked at my account. My frustration is reaching a boiling point as this simple request has turned into a multi-day fiasco.

As a cautionary tail, do not rely in information provided by a CS agent related to VoLTE.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

dust2dust — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 16:34:05 GMT

We often get posts from other customers where it seems the agents have provided incorrect information. It is VERY frustrating.

I'll let those more familiar with iphones provide more assistance. Is your phone set to 4G/LTE or 5G or 3G? Leave it set to 4G/LTE. That's about all I can think of.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

Dunkman — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 16:46:23 GMT

@feenerjames

Frustrating indeed. My iphone 12 also does not have a toggle switch for VoLTE. It looks like it automatically turns on if VoLTE is available. I noticed that once my VoLTE got turn on, the calls instantaneously connected (no delay as before with 3G) and LTE was indeed shown when the call connected.

A few basic troubleshooting advice:

Try add in prefix 1 in front of the area code.

Reboot your phone

Toggle airplane mode on, then off

Network reset of phone (this will erase saved Wifi passwords)

Try your SIM card in another working phone.

P.S. I will move your post to the main forum to get more visibility.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

Nezgar — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 16:52:25 GMT

@feenerjames Unfortunately, you should have ended the ticket as soon as you saw that calls were not downgrading to 3G.. Telus for sure "hides" the VoLTE menu option on iPhones if it is enabled, so there was no need to keep pressing the CS agents to investigate. Obviously, you now need to press more just to get calling working at all.

Secondly, I just returned from a 14 day trip to California, and purchased the 15-day 3GB Data/Talk/Text add-on before departure. I can confirm that even though my phone has working VoLTE service while in Canada, I did not have VoLTE once I arrived in the USA roaming on T-Mobile. I could make outgoing calls which would fallback to the T-Mobile 2G EDGE network, but incoming calls would only work if I forced the phone to 2G mode. If the phone was on LTE mode, incoming calls would only end up at voicemail without ringing the phone.

My home plan in Canada is $15/250MB/100 Minutes, and I can also confirm that the 3Mbps throttle associated with that plan was in place while roaming in the USA using the 3GB roaming data.

Once I came back to Canada, I again have VoLTE service on the home Public Mobile network.

So TLDR; - Whether you have VoLTE or not in Canada currently has no bearing on getting VoLTE service in the US.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

will13am — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 17:22:38 GMT

This is an odd outcome that VoLTE only works in Canada and not while roaming. As for the data speed throttling, I can see that happening. Everything routes back to the home network and the throttles may not differentiate between roaming data and home network data usage. This theory with data performance doesn't match up to calling behavior. This is very baffling.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

Nezgar — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 17:31:50 GMT

@will13am wrote:
This is an odd outcome that VoLTE only works in Canada and not while roaming. As for the data speed throttling, I can see that happening. Everything routes back to the home network and the throttles may not differentiate between roaming data and home network data usage. This theory with data performance doesn't match up to calling behavior. This is very baffling.

I agree that it was "interesting" that VoLTE didn't work while in the USA, but I also figured that we are still in the "primordial" stages of VoLTE at Public Mobile, so I had no expectation it would work or be reliable anyway... I had requested my line be "enabled" early back in March as part of this "test", but not my wife's line, so it was just interesting to see the result that it wouldn't have made a difference anyway.

Maybe this will improve with time...

Yes, data service was still indeed routing back via Canada as a traceroute showed me while down there.. just a little extra latency (about 70ms) added on... Like when a coworker activated a three network Hong Kong eSIM while in the USA a few months earlier, so his data was all routing via Hong Kong. Funny because he was receiving Chinese banner ads on apps and websites. 🙂

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

will13am — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 17:53:26 GMT

Such is the way of life with roaming. The home provider is the one in control, that's who we paid to have roaming service and they dish out the quantity and quality. I have no technical knowledge of what it takes to run VoLTE, but I know for a fact it's not bleeding edge stuff anymore. Telus has had it for their customers years ago. One would think it's a copy, paste effort at this point. I guess not.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

LitlLdy — Sun, 30 Apr 2023 22:07:14 GMT

@feenerjames , I went through at least 4 CSA’s that gave me incorrect information even after being shown proof of what was correct! I have a long post on all the frustration! I finally after all the frustration spoke to an Apple Tech who confirmed with me that theres no VoLTE toggle to turn on even on his iPhone 11 (Mine is an iPhone 14 Pro) with current updated Apple software & he’s with another provider! I completely understand your frustration! It took awhile for me to receive 1 PM tech supplies CSA that knew what that one should be doing! My phone service was working again! Which took a lot!

My iPhone was set to : in Cellular, Cellular Data Options, Voice & Data on LTE, & Data Mode on Standard.

I have been having issues lately where LTE keeps dropping down to 1 signal of service causing calls not to ring through & go to voicemail or dropped calls ! I had to create another support ticket & asked for a Senior CSA to deal it it. After it being escalated they had a Telus tier 2 Tech Support contact me by phone call & said for me to set my phone Voice & Data section to 5G Auto (even though we don’t have 5G, not change Data Mode from Standard) which for some odd reason now allows the signal not to drop down & calls to come through & make calls! He explained to me why it is working on that setting but I can not remember what all the technical terms were that he used! 🤣 I’m just happy it’s working!

Edit: To add I place all my phone calls by adding a 1 to the phone numbers 1st.

Edit: For more info, once I leave my apartment I need to switch to 3G or text & calls will not come through so I am not so sure how good VoLTE actually is!

My post of my not so wonderful experience: VoLTE-on-3G-plan

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

LitlLdy — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 18:20:16 GMT

@Nezgar , ohh wow! That’s certainly interesting to know about your experience with VoLTE not working for you while you were in the USA! Which I thought was a BIG part of the reason for us having VoLTE activated on our accounts! At least you had no expectations yet for it to. Thanks for testing it out & letting us know about it. I guess PM is still working out the bugs in it!

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

dust2dust — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 18:20:03 GMT

Wow. That sucks. The get help faq page says that volte is supposed to work in the states. Didn't we have a customer here reporting that volte was working down there not long ago? I wonder if you were to turn on data whether it would work. I wonder with the fact that you "short-circuited" getting volte whether that made any difference. Like, ok here you go but it'll only work in Canada sort of thing.

Yes the throttling I knew from my own experience. I had also tried to edit the apn but it didn't want to let me do that.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

Nezgar — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 18:36:43 GMT

@dust2dust of course more datapoints from others could be useful. My phone is running a fairly old (2018?) Android 8.1, which originally ran VoLTE on Rogers before I came to PM 2 years later. Would be good to hear about experiences with newer androids, and iPhones as well.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

hycm53 — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 21:00:05 GMT

@feenerjames I don't know iPhone XS, but my iPhone 8 Plus doesn't have a toggle switch for VoLTE, but can choose "LTE" on settings. When I was in Boston with $30 US add on, the phone showed "VoLTE" on settings.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

dust2dust — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 21:04:07 GMT

@hycm53- And your volte worked fine in the US right?

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

hycm53 — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 21:05:04 GMT

@dust2dust wrote:
@hycm53- And your volte worked fine in the US right?

Yes, it did.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

hycm53 — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 21:10:07 GMT

@LitlLdy I confirm iPhone 8 Plus doesn't have toggle to turn on VoLTE only turn on LTE, but once VoLTE is available it automictically shows up.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

hycm53 — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 21:15:09 GMT

@Nezgar wrote:
@feenerjames Unfortunately, you should have ended the ticket as soon as you saw that calls were not downgrading to 3G.. Telus for sure "hides" the VoLTE menu option on iPhones if it is enabled, so there was no need to keep pressing the CS agents to investigate. Obviously, you now need to press more just to get calling working at all.

Secondly, I just returned from a 14 day trip to California, and purchased the 15-day 3GB Data/Talk/Text add-on before departure. I can confirm that even though my phone has working VoLTE service while in Canada, I did not have VoLTE once I arrived in the USA roaming on T-Mobile. I could make outgoing calls which would fallback to the T-Mobile 2G EDGE network, but incoming calls would only work if I forced the phone to 2G mode. If the phone was on LTE mode, incoming calls would only end up at voicemail without ringing the phone.

My home plan in Canada is $15/250MB/100 Minutes, and I can also confirm that the 3Mbps throttle associated with that plan was in place while roaming in the USA using the 3GB roaming data.

Once I came back to Canada, I again have VoLTE service on the home Public Mobile network.

So TLDR; - Whether you have VoLTE or not in Canada currently has no bearing on getting VoLTE service in the US.

For my experience VoLTE worked for me when I was in Boston 2 weeks again.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

LitlLdy — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 21:18:08 GMT

@hycm53 wrote:
@feenerjames I don't know iPhone XS, but my iPhone 8 Plus doesn't have a toggle switch for VoLTE, but can choose "LTE" on settings. When I was in Boston with $30 US add on, the phone showed "VoLTE" on settings.

@hycm53 , I thought that was missing for us here with PM & I was sure I read before that VoLTE shows up on the phone when in US! Thank you for confirming that.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

softech — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 21:42:06 GMT

@LitlLdy according to post on rredit about the toggle on iPhone :

Telus and Bell doesn’t give you the option to toggle volte. It’s on by default. Only Rogers you can toggle.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

Nezgar — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 22:03:45 GMT

@hycm53 wrote:
@dust2dust wrote:
@hycm53- And your volte worked fine in the US right?
Yes, it did.

OK, interesting datapoint if your VoLTE calling worked while in the USA with an iPhone XS. Mine did not with an Android 8.1, which is kind of dated at this point. Would be good to hear some more data points from other Android users.

Re: VoLTE - Terrible experince

will13am — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 22:26:40 GMT

I have a data point to share. S20 FE 5G on android 13, $35/20GB base plan, $30/talk/text/3GB roaming add-on, VoLTE works all along the west coast states, Washington, Oregon, California.