Very Poor Voice Call Quality on multiple Android Phones

[Kingdom]

I have a Pixel 6, up to date, my son has a Samsung, also up to date.

When making calls, with or without WiFi calling enabled, in areas with good 4G, 5G signal strength and/or strong WiFi on a fast Fibre connection, also with EE.

We are reported as faint, keep dropping out, the first sentence from us is not heard, breaking up, silences...

From the same location, my wife's iPhone give's clear calls. We're on a family bundle.

I've worked in digital telecoms and our problems seem to fit a situation where the wrong Codec is being used for the calls on the Android phones. An incorrect setting for the two SIMs at EE.

I haven't been able to talk to anyone at EE about this issue. They keep checking the network rather than the VOLTE/WIFi calling options in use.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Thanks

Peter

[Kingdom]

I tried messaging EE this morning, long chat session until the person said was in accounts and couldn't. Told me to call 150. Called 150 and went to customer retention, explained our frustration and asked what they going to do to stop me leaving? Connected to an engineer, adamant that everything was fine when he looked at the SIM/account settings, asked me to keep a log of calls for 72 hours. Just making some now and noticed the EE WiFi calling is showing at the top of the screen for the first time in Ages. We're now back to crisp calls without drops or garbling! 😁

I think someone at the EE end changed something...

Thanks for all of your assistance!

Peter

[bristolian]

Good news.

Depending on your level of interest & knowledge, there are some apps you can use which enable you to monitor the RAT (radio access technology - 2G/4G/5G) that you're connected to at any given time.

WiFi-calling & 4G-calling (VoLTE) will handover between each other.

[Kingdom]

I would interested, what the android apps called?

Kind Regards

Peter

[bristolian]

NetMonitor Lite is good for providing basic readings of the 4G/5G bands & carriers in use.

Network Cell Info Lite does similar, for mobile & WiFi connections similtaneously. It claims to have site mapping, but the dataset is (at best) dubious and others do that much better.

[Kingdom]

Thanks for the info. Apologies for only realising how to add kudos just now.

[Kingdom]

Downloaded the third of the suggested Apps! 👍😼

Kind Regards

Peter

[Kingdom]

Pretty sure it's the network, I was in Gloucester over the weekend and voice calls were working brilliantly. Came back to Cambridgeshire on Sunday and things were all working correctly as well. Wi-Fi calling, VOLTE seems to have been having a major series of, "bad days", over the last month or so! 😕

What's frustrating is the total lack of status information published by EE for Voice calls. You get more information from Downdetector!

Peter

[bristolian]

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@Kingdom wrote:

What's frustrating is the total lack of status information published by EE for Voice calls. You get more information from Downdetector!

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You can register upto 5 UK postcodes for proactive coverage updates using the "My places" feature on the status webtool.

It's rare for major operators to proactively publish details on major outages.

[Kingdom]

The lack of a status indicator for voice calls is a problem. You can be pumping 0s and 1s back and forth across 4/5G all day... But if the Wi-Fi Calling / VOLTE services are down, you can't make phone calls.

Peter

[bristolian]

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@Kingdom wrote:

But if the Wi-Fi Calling / VOLTE services are down, you can't make phone calls.

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CSFB should always allow voice calls over 2G.

It has limitations I agree, and the voice codecs are narrowband.

Major outages affecting VoLTE are extremely rare.