For about the past month now, all four of the phones in my house -- one of which is only a week or two old now -- have been having trouble with dropped calls inside the house and in the back yard. I have 3 Android phones (1 Motorola, 2 Samsung; the brand-new phone is a Samsung) and 1 iPhone. None of my family can make a call longer than 3-5 minutes without the call dropping.
I have activated Wi-Fi calling, but it doesn't help at all. If I don't use Wi-Fi calling, the signal in my house is so patchy and poor that I can barely make calls at all.
Even outside, in the backyard, we're getting dropped calls. For some reason, though, the phones seem to work okay when they're in the front yard -- even though the cell signal is equally good in the front and back yard (and noticeably better than inside the house).
On two of the phones, I've tried the old trick of turning Wi-Fi on while in airplane mode. Most of the time, neither phone will allow me to make the call without turning airplane mode off. If one of them does somehow let me make a call, the call will still get dropped.
The ISP is definitely not an issue -- the devices plugged directly into the router work with no problems whatsoever. My (fiber-optic) service is for 500 Mbps, and speed tests confirm that I am getting that speed, so bandwidth is absolutely not the problem.
I've checked my wi-fi network, and it's working just fine. The signal strength is good and consistent throughout the house and out in the yard, and nobody is having any problems with their internet usage on their phones or other devices.
I don't see how this could be an issue with the phones themselves -- all four phones, of varying ages and different OSes, would not start having exactly the same problem at exactly the same time if there was an issue with caches, software conflicts, settings, etc. Especially the brand new one, which started having that problem from the moment it came out of the box.
From my research, I'm seeing this kind of situation happening semi-regularly with a variety of phones, on multiple service providers, in various parts of the US -- all of a sudden, people's phones start dropping calls, and enabling Wi-Fi calling doesn't solve the problem. I'm in the 513 area code -- has something happened in my area that might explain this? And is there a solution?
Service issues of any kind are never any fun. I am sorry to hear that you are dealing with dropped calls. It is odd that all lines on the account are having these issues. Before we jump to any conclusions here, we will need to gather more details. Where are you located (City, State)? In the past month or so when this all began, did you notice if anything changed in your area? Any changes to your home (new roof, siding, windows)?
ErinW_VZW
I'm in Morrow, Ohio. I'm not aware of any changes in the area in the past month, and there have definitely been no changes to the house, inside or out.
Any luck so far?
LEng928, thank you for sharing this helpful information. We understand the importance of making sure you are able to keep a consistent connection while you are on a phone call. Let’s review further. How far do you have to travel from your home location to receive a consistent connection? Do you receive a better Wi-Fi Calling experience when only one mobile device is connected to Wi-Fi Calling as opposed to multiple devices?
SylviaT_VZW
I have to either go out into the driveway or outside on the north side of the house to get a call not to drop. The same was true before we could use Wi-Fi calling -- when we could only use the cell network, the inside of the house was pretty much a dead zone unless you went upstairs, where it was still a bit tricky.
Even more strange: The worst pre-WiFi dead spots are actually near the router, and they seem to have become the worst dead spots again, ever since this problem started. It's almost as if we're not even using Wi-Fi calling, even though the phone says we are (at least while the call is active.)
We almost never have more than one person talking on the phone at a time, especially since the problem started, so I don't think we're overloading the network. It doesn't seem to matter, either, whether there's multiple people watching streaming video at once, or if only one person in the house is awake to use the phone -- the problem is just as bad.
(In case this might help: My husband went around the house and property using an app, Network Cell Info Lite, to make some observations. He did say that -- at least inside the house -- the cell network keeps switching back and forth between 1x and LTE, and occasionally IWLAN, especially in the parts of the house which we know are prone to dropped calls. He also says that there's been no change in the router's setup or firmware which might offer some kind of explanation.)
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RosanneM_VZW
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