iPhone not making calls to UK when abroad

[TriciaTailored]

I'm not able to make calls while abroad even though I have contract that allows this. I'm in the US, but calls back to the UK do not work. I get 'calling' and then 'dial assist'. Then fail! I was able to make a call from here about a week ago. I can't even call EE to get help. Any suggestions? I have turned my phone on/off and have tried choosing different networks. I have 4 bars.

[Rafikibob]

I have the same problem.

I’m in the US every other week and have the world roaming blah blah. Works perfectly in Sweden, Finland, Hungary, Germany, The Netherlands, so assume it’s fine across Europe.

But in the US it’s hard to place calls, it rarely connects at all, but when it does the sound is choppy and broken, and it’s very hard to hear or be heard, and then it may disconnect anyway.

I have full signal and 5G connected to AT&T. Tried it with and without Wifi calling.

It’s been like this for over a year.

Rebooting doesn’t work. Network reset doesn’t work. Tried SIM in another phone, just as bad. They swapped the SIM, just as bad.

It must be a “them” thing.

[Christopher_G]

Have you tried changing the network mode to 4G, @Rafikibob? Just to see if it makes a difference?
Chris

[bristolian]

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@Rafikibob wrote:

I have the same problem.

I’m in the US every other week and have the world roaming blah blah

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Not sure what you mean by "the world roaming blah blah"? If you mean a billing add-on, it's irrelevant for anything other than mitigating your costs. Global roaming is self-evidently enabled by virtue of your phone working in non-EU countries.

The thread you'd added to had a potential explanation for this in previous posts - poor voice quality is often caused by a call being carried over non-VoLTE radio layers, which don't always have the current wideband voice codecs available. An excellent test is to try using mobile data whilst on a voice call - this will not work over 2G.

5G networks in NSA mode will use 4G for voice calls by default.

[Rafikibob]

Yep, it did not

[step_hen]

I'm in the US (Wisconsin) at the moment using an iPhone 14. I've had no problems making calls back to the UK. Maybe try a different Network? I find Verizon and AT and T have the best coverage.