Friday, October 9, 2015

Wi-Fi Calling

Dan Moren:

The good news is that AT&T and the FCC seem to have finally finished whatever spat discussions they’ve been having, and iPhone users on the carrier can now enable the Wi-Fi Calling feature added for all in iOS 9. (Previously, it was offered by other carriers, including T-Mobile, but not for AT&T.)

I expect this to work much better than AT&T’s MicroCell, which has limited range and sometimes inexplicably stops working. Unfortunately, Wi-Fi Calling requires an iPhone 6 or 6s.

Update (2015-10-14): Rosyna Keller:

AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile do not charge minutes when using Wifi calling. However, only AT&T restricts to US.

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iOS 9 (on T-Mobile, at least - not sure if it's carrier dependent) seems to address iOS 8's inability to simultaneously use Wi-FI Calling and Continuity for phone calls. I'd turned it off on iOS 8 because I missed the ability to use my laptop as a big speaker phone.

In at least some situations on T-Mobile (this may be carrier-dependent as well), Wi-Fi Calling does not properly pass touch tones through to automated phone systems. I have it turned on most of the time because my signal at home is terrible but I have to turn it off -- and hope my signal isn't terrible -- whenever I need to call our scheduling system for work. This used to work fine, so I'm not sure if it's an iOS 9 bug, whether it was introduced in one of the point updates, or something else entirely.

cl

@cl
I've run into that touch tone problem too. Seems to go in and out.

@mjtsai
Att wifi calling won't work on the 5S? It's works fine for spouse's on T-Mobile. I don't know if it's carrier dependent, though.

Rajiv Varma

Still getting the "oops" error with AT&T here. That is it says it's available, gives the the EULA screen to approve, but never turns on correctly.

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