topic Re: WiFi Calling in Mobile Services

WiFi Calling

Fainbrog — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 13:19:06 GMT

Hi all,

I've got WiFi Calling enabled on my phone, EE SIM, iPhone 12.

I'm just not convinced it's actually working. I keep having calls drop and poor reception and if I look at network traffic on my router there is nothing obvious that stands out as WiFi calling amongst all the other traffic (some of it is obvious, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter etc).

I've rebooted my phone and router, but whilst it says EE WiFi Calling in the top left of the lock screen, I'm just not sure it's working.

Does anyone know the destination addresses for EE WiFi Calling so I can check that my ISP is not doing something to block them? I'm with Virgin Media for my ISP - but my router is not showing it even getting that far when I check in Wireshark.

Thanks

Re: WiFi Calling

Leanne_T — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 15:44:49 GMT

Hi @Fainbrog

Thanks for coming here.

Are you able to try another WiFi network to see if the same happens?

You can find information and help in our Using WiFi Calling | Mobile Help | EE.

Leanne.

Re: WiFi Calling

Fainbrog — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 15:59:41 GMT

Hi Leanne,

Thanks, I can try another WiFi network, but, I guess the issue I'm seeing, or rather not seeing, is network traffic on my home network from my phone suggesting that my phone is doing WiFi Calling.

From everything I have read, other than enabling WiFi Calling in the iPhone settings, ordinarily, there's nothing else that needs to be done.

Thanks

Re: WiFi Calling

Leanne_T — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 16:01:06 GMT

You should not need to do anything further than turn on WiFi Calling @Fainbrog

If this is experiencing problems, please call us on 150 and the team will get this looked into 🙂

Leanne.

Re: WiFi Calling

bristolian — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 16:10:41 GMT

WiFi-calling will intentionally only kick-in if your phone has minimal or zero mobile network coverage - some recent Android releases have a "WiFi-preferred" option, but most don't, and "mobile-preferred" is the default.

To that end, a common workaround is to enable flight mode (thus disabling all radios) and enabling WiFi independently. VoWiFi should engage on the basis of zero mobile coverage.

Re: WiFi Calling

Fainbrog — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 16:53:09 GMT

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. Our mobile signal at home has been flakey of late (though EE say there's nothing wrong - it doesn't help that the local NIMBYs get uppety whenever a proposal for new cell towers come along so despite being in London, 5G is pitiful at best), so, I guess I'd expected it to go WiFi first when the phone was on my home network and WiFi calling was enabled.

I'd not considered flight mode, I'll give that a whirl whilst am at home for now - it defo works making calls as just tested over WiFi.

My next challenge then will be to build some automation to flip it to flight mode when I get home and back to cellular when I leave..

Re: WiFi Calling

srb — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 07:08:39 GMT

I too had lots of frustration of my callers not hearing me when at home with poor mobile signal. EE told me it was down to the phone manufacturer prioritising the mobile network, however I have found posts showing other networks allow the selection of WiFi calling priority.

I found the best solution is to make automations in Shortcuts. One to turn off mobile data when joining the home WiFi network and the other to turn mobile data back on when leaving the home WiFi. Call quality is now perfect.

Re: WiFi Calling

bristolian — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 07:14:28 GMT

@srb wrote:

EE told me it was down to the phone manufacturer prioritising the mobile network, however I have found posts showing other networks allow the selection of WiFi calling priority.

The restriction is a device-driven one. Many Android phones have this option.

Re: WiFi Calling

srb — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 07:31:57 GMT

I thought I had seen somewhere that other networks allowed a priority setting on iPhones but could be wrong.

I can see the reason for not wanting to use overly busy WiFi networks for calls, but on the home WiFi the shortcut automation solution made sense.

I do have one bar of 4G in one location and one bar of 5G signal at another. One would have thought that this would give good call quality but it didn’t. In fact having WiFi calling on made it worse as it seemed to keep switching between VoLTE and VoWiFi meaning words were chopped too.

Re: WiFi Calling

bristolian — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 07:46:15 GMT

@srb wrote:

I do have one bar of 4G in one location and one bar of 5G signal at another. One would have thought that this would give good call quality but it didn’t

In NSA-mode, 5G-NR sits ontop of 4G-LTE and your calls use VoLTE. Even without that, 5G is not deployed alone.

Re: WiFi Calling

srb — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 08:53:13 GMT

OK, I don’t understand the technicalities as you do but my point is that one bar of signal doesn’t give good call quality, which surprises me as voice bandwidth is low and I have over 3 Mbps of speed at this signal level. I’m sure that in the “good ole days” a few years ago calls were possible with lower signal strength, or maybe that’s just an old guy’s memory 😀. Or is it that iPhones show one bar at lower signal strength these days?

Re: WiFi Calling

bristolian — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 08:57:26 GMT

The onscreen bars are only a rough guide to service, different phones can often display different numbers of bars for the exact same carrier/signal.

One bar of signal is quite capable of giving excellent call quality, providing the underlying radio parameters that feed into the "bar calculations" are within good levels.

Re: WiFi Calling

Robolovsky — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 18:11:00 GMT

The best way to make sure there is no interference from the mobile network is to turn on Airplane mode but with WiFi also turned on. Once you do this manually, WiFi will stay on whenever you switch airplane mode on, forcing WiFi calling on also. Airplane Mode can then be automated to turn on whenever you come home and off as soon as you leave again. It's not quite as obvious how you do this as turning Mobile Data on and off. To do this with Airplane mode, you first have to create shortcuts. One for Airplane Mode on and one for off. Once you have done that you can set up the automation to trigger the on shortcut when you enter your home and then to trigger the off shortcut when you leave. Works like magic.

Re: WiFi Calling

Robolovsky — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 18:14:11 GMT

I should have mentioned the above advice is specifically for use on the iPhone. MIne is a 16 which is often shown as one of the models particularly affected by the WiFi calling issue.