Dropped Calls

[Greggbran]

I have tried everything to attempt to resolve the dropped call  issues I have been having  including multiple sims/ Esims,  New Iphones  ,reset network , change to 3G or 4G instead of 5g on or 5G auto  and the list goes on . I have asked for a couple of network resets on their end as well ... Signal is usually strong . I have contacted support (CSAgent ) on a few occasions  and spoken to them in an  attempt to resolve the issue ..... still with  no resolution .. I am a very patient person but it is wearing thin... Does anyone else have this issue on a regular basis.. I am out of ideas .. Gregg 

[Greggbran]

lol. Totally agree. 

[Tom22335566]

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@slusagm wrote:

@Greggbran 

I tried to do the same.  Ticket to support and  ask for some money back.  The reply from agent was to ask me to perform some troubleshooting steps.  Did you have to do that? what troubleshoot they need?

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Slus, the amount of troubleshooting that GRegg went through, it was like $0.10 an hour lol....good luck bro. I didn't even bother trying to get a discount. It wasn't worth my time

[Greggbran]

Yes i did have to do some of that to figure out if its your phone ,software or the network that was the problem .. Good luck !

[slusagm]

@Greggbran 

I tried to do the same.  Ticket to support and  ask for some money back.  The reply from agent was to ask me to perform some troubleshooting steps.  Did you have to do that? what troubleshoot they need?

[Colbydog]

That's pretty good! I sent a message over the weekend asking for compensation as well. The told me that I need to wait for the issue to be fixed first before seeing what kind of credit I might get. Seems a bit backwards to me. Probably because I haven't been a PM customer for long.

[Greggbran]

I received  a $20 credit. I’ll ask every month ! lol. 

[Tom22335566]

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@Greggbran wrote:

They need new microtowers to expand capacity ! That's not going to happen anytime soon .. I have requested a discount ...

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Let me know what you get lol....not sure if its worth the effort

[Tom22335566]

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@funpig1 wrote:

@Greggbran @Tom22335566 @smurfit @KabilaMob @Colbydog 

PM has now publicly admitted that they have a network issue causing dropped calls in the Announcements. You should not have to pay full price for something that does not work properly. In your ticket with PM, demand that they fix the problem ASAP and provide you some compensation for your troubles. Good luck.

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Hey funpig, do you have a link to the announcement? Btw, I had to make a longer call yesterday and dropped at 8 mins and another time at 20mins. Very frustrating. My wife on FIDO hasn't had a dropped call since I moved her 3 weeks ago....and she talks for hours with her sister, friends etc everyday.

[Greggbran]

They need new microtowers to expand capacity ! That's not going to happen anytime soon .. I have requested a discount ...

[funpig1]

@Greggbran @Tom22335566 @smurfit @KabilaMob @Colbydog 

PM has now publicly admitted that they have a network issue causing dropped calls in the Announcements. You should not have to pay full price for something that does not work properly. In your ticket with PM, demand that they fix the problem ASAP and provide you some compensation for your troubles. Good luck.

[smurfit]

Doh! I thought it was all fixed, but dropped a call 3x today. 9min, 9min, 24min. All factors of 3 again. This time I was using a new phone that is volte supported. Moto G Stylus 2023. So whatever the previous fix was, only applied to my pixel 3. Back to the drawing board..

[Tom22335566]

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@Colbydog wrote:

No response from Telus on resolution to the issues. I made a call this morning and it dropped again at the 29:30 mark.

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you are one determined "dog" lol. I've given up long ago. I just know that if there is a need for a reliable phone call, I either call from my home phone (yes, I still have an archaic home line but it is free with my home internet and tv plan through Rogers) or I borrow my wife's phone who is with Fido.

I've already paid for another month with public mobile so I'm going to be here at least till the beginning of July

[Colbydog]

No response from Telus on resolution to the issues. I made a call this morning and it dropped again at the 29:30 mark.

[Tom22335566]

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@funpig1 wrote:

@Colbydog @smurfit 

Any updates from your tech support tickets?

I have not had any dropped calls from my home location in the the last 10 days. 

But something really weird happened yesterday when I was in Surrey. I attach a screenshot of the call history. 

At 2:39pm, I had called somebody who's on a Fido Mobile plan and left a 24 second message for him to call me back.

At 4:08pm, the other person tried to call me back. Each time, my phone would ring once and then hang up as a missed call. The other caller repeated this 4-5 times but his call to me would not go through to me. Finally, I pushed "send" and called him and then I was able to talk with him for 3min 45 sec before voluntarily hanging up.

I have no idea if this is a PM problem or a Fido problem. 

 

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My wife is on FIDO. We do not have these types of issues and I talk to her multiple times a day. SO....given Public Mobile's track record, i'm leaning more towards this being a PM glitch. I haven't ever encountered anything like this though. When people call me, it always rings and I'm able to pick up

[Tom22335566]

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@funpig1 wrote:

Edit:   I made a second test call from my landline to my PM phone.  After 3 hours, without a drop, I voluntarily hung up.   FYI, The signal strength was about -113 dBm, battery level was 40% at the end, and the phone still remained cool to the touch.

I don't know whether today's two tests were just flukes or if the dropped call problem for me has been fixed. If so, hopefully Telus will address my slow mobile data next. I hope you all see some improvement. 

 

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That's encouraging

[funpig1]

@Colbydog @smurfit 

Any updates from your tech support tickets?

I have not had any dropped calls from my home location in the the last 10 days. 

But something really weird happened yesterday when I was in Surrey. I attach a screenshot of the call history. 

At 2:39pm, I had called somebody who's on a Fido Mobile plan and left a 24 second message for him to call me back.

At 4:08pm, the other person tried to call me back. Each time, my phone would ring once and then hang up as a missed call. The other caller repeated this 4-5 times but his call to me would not go through to me. Finally, I pushed "send" and called him and then I was able to talk with him for 3min 45 sec before voluntarily hanging up.

I have no idea if this is a PM problem or a Fido problem. 

 

[funpig1]

Edit:   I made a second test call from my landline to my PM phone.  After 3 hours, without a drop, I voluntarily hung up.   FYI, The signal strength was about -113 dBm, battery level was 40% at the end, and the phone still remained cool to the touch.

I don't know whether today's two tests were just flukes or if the dropped call problem for me has been fixed. If so, hopefully Telus will address my slow mobile data next. I hope you all see some improvement. 

 

[Colbydog]

A Telus tech just called me. Same explanation, they suspect it’s a software/platform issue with just the PM network. They are linking together all the data from people with this issue to try and fix.  Hopefully they get to bottom of this soon.

interestingly, my call was about 10 minutes and I had 5G toggled, didn’t seem to impact anything.

[smurfit]

Hi. In BC. Calls all go over 3G for me. Was using a pixel 3 which is volte supported by Telus but not PM. Even on LTE setting, as soon as call comes in, it switches to 3G UMTS. Probably not as good voice quality as volte, but good enough for me...as long as it keeps working.

[KabilaMob]

Which area are you in and was this 4G LTE or 5G?

[Colbydog]

Hallelujah! Thanks for the update. 🤞🤞

[Colbydog]

LOL! I guess the Telus CEO must have complained about the poor cell coverage at head office (I live about a mile from the Telus boot headquarters in Burnaby, BC). I’ll ride whatever coattails I can get at this point to get better coverage 😎

[smurfit]

I think it might be resolved! I was on a call for over 2hrs today and at some point I was kinda hoping it would drop but nope... I actually had to tap hangup!

[Habsy1]

A Telus technician called me today and said that it is a Public software problem and that they are working on it. He admitted that they are getting a number of complaints, so it's not an individual thing. Hooray! Hopefully, they can fix it soon. In the meantime, I had a 20-minute call yesterday without issue.

[funpig1]

@Tom22335566 are you located in Lower Mainland, BC.? Rogers (and I am guessing Fido) is consistently better than Telus in the city according to most reviews.  I am not sure about the differences in technology.  Rogers seems to only use a few big towers every couple of miles to provide almost seamless coverage.  OTOH, Telus needs to put up hundreds of microcell transceivers, sometimes several within the same city block to patch up their coverage.  Good luck.

[funpig1]

@Tom22335566   @Colbydog 

This can be infuriating. 

Because of the weak coverage, our mobile data speeds are consistently slow at our home location.

My dropped calls at my home location can be pretty random.

Last week, I had a call drop three times all in about ten minutes with one particular client. He is on the Rogers network so I am not sure if this is due to bad interconnectivity between different providers. 

Today, on the other hand, I made a test call between my PM cell phone and my Telus landline and it lasted exactly two hours before dropping.  I used my landline to call my cell phone in my weak coverage home location.  I then took the dog and cell phone for a 50 minute run around the neighbourhood, all the while still in the middle of the call.  I stopped in a store and made a Google Wallet purchase with my phone.  I returned to my home and still kept the same call going.  I did some searches on my phone and checked my WhatsApp messages.  Somebody called me on my cell phone in the middle of the landline call;  I put my landline call on hold and took the other call for about 10 minutes before hanging up this second call.  I was still connected to the first landline call. This call finally dropped on its own at exactly 2 hours on the dot. (This happened to @Colbydog ). I can't ever recall being on a call this long before.   During the call and while I was walking around, my signal strength varied from about -123 (at my house) to -70 (by a microcell transceiver).  My Pixel 7a battery was still 75% at the time the call ended.   I have no explanation for why the call lasted so long and dropping at exactly 120 minutes.  Maybe it was because, the weather was sunny and clear and the wind was blowing the signal my direction and maybe there is some cap on the length of a call, lol.

Things I have done on the advice of tech support in the last week (YMMV):

My current phone settings were changed to: Preferred network: LTE. turned off automatically select network and manually selected PM.    And very once in a while, I reset my network, flip airplane mode on and off, or restart my phone, but I do these randomly and I am not sure these do anything.

These should not make any difference according to tech support, but I turned them off anyways:  Roaming and 2G calling. 

And recently I discovered another setting on my Pixel 7a and turned off "adaptive connectivity".  I have no idea what this does, but some on reddit suggested leaving it off.  

One thing that annoys me. I have been a Telus paying customer for 29 years and Telus has done nothing to improve the weak coverage at my location.  @Colbydog just joined PM about 2 weeks ago and his neighbourhood is going to get $24 million dollars in recently announced Telus upgrades.  Not fair.  All I got was $10 credit. I feel like Charlie Brown during Halloween.

Good luck.

[Tom22335566]

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@funpig1 wrote:

Telus technical support phoned me again. We spoke for over 30 minutes. FWIW, no drop during that call.

Bad news.  They told me that the SMS text sent to me by Telus was badly worded. Telus recognizes that that my location is a weak signal area. However, there will be no immediate plans to do anything for my area. So I will just have to wait.

PM threw me a $10 credit for my troubles.

I asked tech support a bunch of questions, many of which were raised in this community and private message.

They deny that there's any major issue or flaw with VoLTE causing the dropped calls. They say that the dropped calls are mostly related to weak coverage and congestion.

As discussed previously, LTE as your preferred Network over 5G may make your connection more stabler.  And 3G is better for range than LTE. So downgrading the preferred network in your phone settings may help in weaker coverage (No guarantees that this will work for you). But then you will get poorer quality of calls and no access to high-speed data.

Tech support also denies that there's any sort of priority or preferred calling between Telus, Koodo and PM customers. Everybody is accessing the same voice and data network. I am just passing on the message. Feel free to believe what you want.

I asked them about the 1,800 second time out problem. Surprisingly, they say that something like that COULD happen but it is an individual programming thing which can be fixed.  And if it does affect a particular individual, it should happen all of the time at the exactly the same time limit, namely always drop off at exactly 1,800 second (or whatever your time limit is). Tech gave me another example where somebody's calls would always cut out exactly at midnight. They say this should be fixable if you are affected in this way. 

I told tech support about your situation that you had no problems when you were with Telus 5G for five months and when you switched over to PM 5G you were immediately affected with lots of dropped calls ever since. Tech says that you may be dealing with a new account related issue. Newly activated accounts often have a lot of issues. Tech says once you get your ticket looked at, tech support should be able to fix your problem. FWIW, they said that there should be no difference between your PM 5G and your previous Telus 5G at the same location. 

Regarding my slow mobile data speed during the power outage in my neighborhood this morning, tech support told me this is directly related to the extra congestion when everybody switched from home Wi-Fi to mobile data when the power went out. They said they saw a lot of this during covid. People were not working and spending all of their time on their phones which created a huge amount of congestion, dropped calls and slow mobile data speeds.

Good luck to everybody. I hope you find the above information helpful when you are dealing with tech support and that you all find solutions for your particular problems.

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I thank you for all your efforts. So much effort, but no resolution. That's the issue I have. Its great that they call you and give you $10 but nothing has changed, dropped calls galore. Text and data are fine. My 5G works the same as when I was with Telus 4 weeks ago, so that part of what the tech said seems to correlate. Its just the dropped calls. And it isn't just me, its many many many people so something is definitely up with PM. 

BTW, my problem isn't weak signal. I've got very strong signal at my house, office etc. My dropped calls are happening sometimes with 4 bars. Anyways, my wife got switched to Fido 6 days ago. No dropped calls in 6 days. She is happy. I'm still not sure what to do yet as my monthly renews with PM on the 9th so either I switch before then or I'm with PM for another month

[Tom22335566]

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@KabilaMob wrote:

I'm in the exact same boat. My wife is complaining about PM and wants out. Dropped calls galore.

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Yes bro, happy wife, happy life. I switched my wife to Fido, the complaining stopped lol. No dropped calls for her in 6 days.

[KabilaMob]

I'm in the exact same boat. My wife is complaining about PM and wants out. Dropped calls galore.

[funpig1]

Telus technical support phoned me again. We spoke for over 30 minutes. FWIW, no drop during that call.

Bad news.  They told me that the SMS text sent to me by Telus was badly worded. Telus recognizes that that my location is a weak signal area. However, there will be no immediate plans to do anything for my area. So I will just have to wait.

PM threw me a $10 credit for my troubles.

I asked tech support a bunch of questions, many of which were raised in this community and private message.

They deny that there's any major issue or flaw with VoLTE causing the dropped calls. They say that the dropped calls are mostly related to weak coverage and congestion.

As discussed previously, LTE as your preferred Network over 5G may make your connection more stabler.  And 3G is better for range than LTE. So downgrading the preferred network in your phone settings may help in weaker coverage (No guarantees that this will work for you). But then you will get poorer quality of calls and no access to high-speed data.

Tech support also denies that there's any sort of priority or preferred calling between Telus, Koodo and PM customers. Everybody is accessing the same voice and data network. I am just passing on the message. Feel free to believe what you want.

I asked them about the 1,800 second time out problem. Surprisingly, they say that something like that COULD happen but it is an individual programming thing which can be fixed.  And if it does affect a particular individual, it should happen all of the time at the exactly the same time limit, namely always drop off at exactly 1,800 second (or whatever your time limit is). Tech gave me another example where somebody's calls would always cut out exactly at midnight. They say this should be fixable if you are affected in this way. 

I told tech support about your situation that you had no problems when you were with Telus 5G for five months and when you switched over to PM 5G you were immediately affected with lots of dropped calls ever since. Tech says that you may be dealing with a new account related issue. Newly activated accounts often have a lot of issues. Tech says once you get your ticket looked at, tech support should be able to fix your problem. FWIW, they said that there should be no difference between your PM 5G and your previous Telus 5G at the same location. 

Regarding my slow mobile data speed during the power outage in my neighborhood this morning, tech support told me this is directly related to the extra congestion when everybody switched from home Wi-Fi to mobile data when the power went out. They said they saw a lot of this during covid. People were not working and spending all of their time on their phones which created a huge amount of congestion, dropped calls and slow mobile data speeds.

Good luck to everybody. I hope you find the above information helpful when you are dealing with tech support and that you all find solutions for your particular problems.