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US Roaming

hmcpye
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

I purchased the $30 US roaming package in September and while I was in the US I could text and use data but was unable to make voice calls.  I tried re-starting several times with no luck.  I'm heading to the US again Saturday and would like to know if I will have the same issue?  Is this something that happens frequently?  I would really hate to waste another $30.

6 REPLIES 6

Yeah not likely indeed. The list is not exactly in stone but with your prior experience after volte came out, that would be the conclusion.
You can verify this by making a call and staying on it, go to settings, about phone, status information, sim card status - look for mobile voice network type and see if it says UMTS. I suspect it will. But maybe it will say LTE. Only when on a call.
A little wording similarity here, our non-volte-enabled phones currently sit waiting on LTE. Then they "fallback" to 3G UMTS for a call. One could say that when roaming on T-Mobile that the phone "falls back" to 2G GSM for the call, bypassing 3G. The weird part is that this might not happen in all areas. In some areas it will but in other areas you might need to change to 2G GSM manually. Text will work there as well. Then when you need data you switch back to 4G LTE.

So when you go next time, when you are able to connect to a US tower (T-Mobile) (either by land crossing or taxiing in after landing) connect manually to T-Mobile. You might be able to make and receive calls. Or change to 2G GSM manually.

The thing to be aware of is that coverage will be less than ideal. And non-existent in Alaska.

@hmcpye Your phone is not on PM's VoLTE compatability list, so that's why you are having trouble with phone calls. Without VoLTE your phone tries to fallback to 3G to make phone calls, but the US has shut down their 3G networks. No network = no phone calls.

https://www.publicmobile.ca/en/on/get-help/articles/volte

Aside from getting a new phone, your only hope is for a 2G TMobile connection. If you can manually connect to T-Mobile it may find a 2G tower if you're lucky.

hmcpye
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

It's a Samsung Galaxy S10


@PrizmalEDM wrote:

Sucks to hear you're having issues, I would recommend possibly looking for alternatives than to maybe waste another $30, there's plenty of cheaper options for roaming data or even free trials like Google Fi.


If the OP can ensure that he has volte on his phone...the roaming add-on will work as good as if he was at home. Talk data / text work great regardless.

PrizmalEDM
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

Sucks to hear you're having issues, I would recommend possibly looking for alternatives than to maybe waste another $30, there's plenty of cheaper options for roaming data or even free trials like Google Fi.

dust2dust
Mayor / Maire

It's likely that your phone is not enabled for volte here. What is the make and model so we can figure it out with you?

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