U.S. roaming calls not working

[Christopher_H]

Nov 6 I bought the $30 U.S. roaming plan for talk, text and data.  Before leaving Canada I upgraded from 3G to 4 G. Roaming Text and data were fine but any calls would immediately drop.  I tried calling local numbers I tried numbers back in Canada, I tried roaming on, I tried roaming off.  I tried AT&T, I tried Verizon. This issue occurs on both my cell phone and my wife's.  We are staying in Oxnard California.  My first 15 day plan has expired and now I have paid another $30 for another 15 days but same issue.  No calls work to anywhere.  This is awful.  I am paying for a service that doesn't work!  Twice!  Any suggestions?

[Phil_Adelphus]

@Christopher_H   It looks like maybe the US carriers only support certain models of the LG G7 for VoLTE.  AT&T's whitelist includes G710ULM only.  I didn't see anything definitive for T-Mobile but there was some suggestion it too may be model dependent.  So perhaps even if PM had enabled it for that phone there could still be a problem in the US.  Canada will be shutting down 3G also at some point (possibly in two years at the earliest but not known for sure).  Carriers in Canada were sending out notifications for 3G phones saying they would have problems in the US, I got the text from my former provider and that phone too was VoLTE capable but they didn't enable it.

[DennyCrane]

@Christopher_H That's likely because there is no 2G network, and there definitely isn't a 3G network. 2G is very old and not widely available anymore. The 3G network was probably still up and running when you went last year, but the US carriers have since shut them down completely. Your phone needs to be able to make phone calls on LTE, which yours isn't (i.e. VoLTE).

The fault is between PM and the roaming partners. It's the roaming partners fault for shutting down their 3G network, and it's PM's fault for a lackluster implementation of VoLTE. If you have a compatible phone it would be fine, but unfortunately PM's whitelist is relatively small.

[Christopher_H]

Thank you Phil and Denny,  I have tried all of " connect automatically" then specifically AT&T then specifically T-Mobile.  With each one of those, I tried LTE, 3G and 2G.  With either network and the 3G or 2G I get "No network available".  The ONLY setting that works is LTE.  I have also restarted the phone multiple times with the setting changes.  So ... LTE is the only setting that connects to the two networks and neither one will allow me to make a phone call.  As I said, this phone worked ok last year in California.  I have resorted to using a VoIP SIP app with my VoIP.ms account from home and this works with wifi or data.  However, why is Public Mobile offering a roaming service that doesn't work?  Thank you for your help.

[Phil_Adelphus]

@Christopher_H   The US carriers shut down their 3G networks at various times last year.   I thought AT&T and T-Mobile (PM's roaming partners) shut down earlier last year than exactly a year ago but it seems like that's the problem now.  Hopefully you can connect to T-Mobile's 2G.  It should just be voice calls that are not working, texting and data are OK?

[DennyCrane]

@Christopher_H Not just LTE, VoLTE (voice over LTE). https://www.publicmobile.ca/en/on/get-help/articles/volte

The US does not have a 3G network to make calls on, so VoLTE is a requirement there. It doesn't look like your phone is compatible for VoLTE on Public Mobile. Your only hope of getting phone calls to work is on T-Mobile 2G. Try to manually connect if possible.

Definitely don't use Verizon, as no services will work there.

[Christopher_H]

Thank you for replying so quickly Phil.  Yes, my LG G7 phone is LTE capable and yes I have it set to LTE.  Yes, I tried T- mobile not Verizon as I stated in the first post.  Also, I used this phone with US roaming plan a year ago and it worked.  So I'm a little perplexed.

[Phil_Adelphus]

@Christopher_H  Do you know if your phones are VoLTE capable and enabled?  If not you would need to try and connect to T-Mobile's 2G network because there is no more 3G in the US.  If you're not sure about VoLTE, what phone and models do you have?