Intermittent ability to make calls - Belleville

[chrismc]

Hello

To first cover the often asked questions:

- 3 PublicMibile accounts at my house - all paid up, all unlimited..all in good status

- All phones same type: HTC U11

- radio level of 5 bars

- until this weekend.....never a problem

Problem: dial the Public Mobile voicemail....lucky if a connection is made 2 in 10 attempts. Same situation for calls to other mobile devices or to my home line. Incoming calls not received either with reliability (maybe 2 in 10).

SMS is fine - no issue

Mobile Data - no issue

So this points to a voice channel or routing problem at the tower my 3 devices are hitting. Any other thoughts/ideas?

Chris

[Korth]

At first I thought probably a local service outage, scheduled or unscheduled maintenance, your tower(s) fell offline, whatever. But three weeks seems excessive.

I'd actually suspect radio interference, maybe commercial, maybe amateur, probably unintentional (because CRTC/FCC regulations and fines, etc).

You aren't likely to get much response from @CS_Agent on these forums. 

But you can file a complaint with CCTS. Part of the complaint process requires you first attempt to communicate (and resolve the problem) directly with the carrier - so click here to send a Private Message to the Moderator Team - your complaint will be discarded if you ignore this step. 

[chrismc]

UPDATE - grab a drink and a snack.

No change in the inability to make calls. PublicMobile support ticket process....wow....I do not have anything good to say. I have validated my personal information multiple times, have clarified the techinical details multiple times to multiple people as well. Seems almost like the ticket history is not available to "new" people looking at the ticket.

As a test, 1 week agoI went an purchased a Lucky Mobile SIM (Bell)...same calling issues observed. Via a land line I called the Lucky Mobile support team and within 5 minutes had a technician pulling traces and see my calls fail. Ticket escalated to the regional tower team.

My neighbour - a Telus user - same issue so asked them to open a ticket.

So in summary many many people have reported call drop, inability to call issues to Rogers, Bell and Telus/Public Mobile for my area....and we await a resolution.

CMc

[sheytoon]

Oh wow. -74 dBm RSCP for 3G is a very strong signal. I wonder what the issue is.

Do you know anyone on Bell in your neighbourhood to compare with?

[chrismc]

Hello

Performed a number of additional tests:

- first made numerous test calls outside of my house to ensure that interference inside the house was not a factor - no improvement

- changed to WCDMA only and tested - same result. Signal levels of -74dBm  20 asu

- had neighbour that recelently moved to PM on my suggestion try to make calls on his new Pixel 3: same issue. 1 out of 5 call attempts successful, yet phone shows 5 solid bars

I have not heard from the moderators...and if I do not by EOD Monday I will start to escalate via other paths.

[chrismc]

I sent the moderators a private message a number of days ago. What is teh expected response time?

[sheytoon]

First things first. Your LTE signal will not impact your voice call capability. On Public Mobile's network, the job of the LTE network is to direct your phone to 3G for voice calls.

Having said that, here's some general feedback on LTE. RSRP of -125 dBm is about the practical limit for usability. I would consider that to be cell edge. You are not close to that, so you are still within adequate coverage.

RSRP of -100 is well within coverage. Some modern phones will show 4 out of 5 bars with that signal level.

RSRQ is measuring the "quality" of the LTE signal, mainly due to interference or power on the shared channels by other users. I wouldn't worry too much about -13 dB. Unless you are seeing below -16 dB for RSRQ, you should be fine. Even then, it's only going to affect your data speeds on LTE.

I'm not sure why you're having issues, but LTE signal level isn't the reason. How was your signal when you forced the phone to WCDMA? Please note WCDMA signal will be measured by a different parameter called RSCP.

[chrismc]

Ola

Was able to turn of LTE and force WCDMA. The call setup characteristics changed a bit - timing - but the end result was the same - no connection.

This afternoon I travelled 15 kms to the west. Tried 5 calls on my phone and 5 on my wife's - 100% success. A screen capture on my wife's phone showed LTE with a RSRP of -99 and an RSRQ of -13

When I got back home, checked my signal levels and they are RSRP of -100 and RSRQ of -10  (-10 is a better signal than -13...stronger)

According to the chart at https://usatcorp.com/faqs/understanding-lte-signal-strength-values/

the RSRP of -100 is "good" and the RSRQ of -10 is Good/Fair

Using a different chart at https://wiki.teltonika.lt/view/Mobile_Signal_Strength_Recommendations#4G_.28LTE.29

RSRP of -100 is "No Signal - Disconnect" and a RSRQ of -10 is excellent

Summary - no idea if these levels are "good" or "bad"....but the fact that 100% call attempts on a different tower are good, and 90% or higher of the attempts on my tower are bad...on 3 devices...and the signal levels in the tests above are quite similar....methinks there is a tower issue, and being a long weekend repair/detection could take time.

[sheytoon]

@chrismc can you force your phone to "3G only" or UMTS or WCDMA?

I'm wondering if the 3G network is having issues. As you might know, voice calls are on 3G, while text and data can be on 3G or LTE.

[chrismc]

Thank you - Moderators contacted via private message.
Another member provided an outage page (not a Telus page) that indicated Belleville is having issues. Without knowing how that data is obtained, cannot say if it is of value. For example a Google search of "Belleville publicmobile outage" and this forum post is #2. A web crawler could be gathering the data....

Will update this thread when something useful is learned.

[DanielleMarie]

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@chrismc wrote:

Hello

To first cover the often asked questions:

- 3 PublicMibile accounts at my house - all paid up, all unlimited..all in good status

- All phones same type: HTC U11

- radio level of 5 bars

- until this weekend.....never a problem

Problem: dial the Public Mobile voicemail....lucky if a connection is made 2 in 10 attempts. Same situation for calls to other mobile devices or to my home line. Incoming calls not received either with reliability (maybe 2 in 10).

SMS is fine - no issue

Mobile Data - no issue

So this points to a voice channel or routing problem at the tower my 3 devices are hitting. Any other thoughts/ideas?

Chris

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Hmm, this is a tricky one. You might have to contact the mods! Info on how to do that is here: https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Knowledge-Base/The-Public-Mobile-Moderator-Team/ta-p/...

[Anonymous]

@chrismc- Did you check the outage map?  https://istheservicedowncanada.com/status/telus/map

Not sure exactly where belleville is, but there are some issues in the GTA and surrounding areas, as well as elsewhere in Ontario.

Other than that, you might need to contact moderator team.  No way 3 phones all developed hardware issues at the same time.

In case you need to...

Click here to send the moderator team a private message. Their hours are: Mon-Fri 8AM-Midnight(EST) & Sat/Sun 8AM-10:00PM(EST)