Ask HN: Hypothesis: Cellular providers are deprioritizing voice calls
I switched from Verizon to T-Mobile because I was experiencing too many silent missed calls, where my iPhone never rang and no missed call appeared. This happened across multiple devices, on both Wi-Fi and cellular, with Wi-Fi calling enabled and disabled, and with frequent contacts as well as new callers. After a year on T-Mobile, the problem is about the same as Verizon, and I still regularly miss calls without any notification. I hypothesize that since many subscribers use voice calls less, cellular providers have found they can reduce voice call quality without losing customers.
I totally agree. Driving on the autobahn and calling someone gets worse and worse. They are decreasing the number of people having a call at once. The Quality with Signal/WhatsApp Audio seems better than cellular.
I forgot to mention: whatsapp, facetime voice calls, etc... all seem to work fine even when the cellular calls aren't going through. So yes, that matches my experience.
Australia, regional in Queensland state. I've noted similar in the three main networks, where I've suspected the load balancing algorithm for traffic adjusts a setting in regard to cut off on signal strength hasn't been quite set right. Obviously at times dealing with extraordinary use at the time, one expects balancing. One network in my locale a few years ago, it was quite clear it was either over subscribed, techs made a mistake adjusting the algorithms ... or just too many people trying to use that particular one tower, and three people in the same spot could often note the three different states the network could be in, none, unavailable, signal - this existed for many months. The balancing has been tuned up a few times since then. I have found when the network's coverage was spotty for voice calls, one could generally use data to get online albeit as slow rates. Recently the main network I'm using (Optus,) I've noted missed calls that went to voice mail, I have not heard the call at all. I have been blaming signal though I don't have it on me (sits outside the window up high) to ensure the phone has good signal. However on data over wifi, the network often drops out for a minute or more at times.
Interesting. Another detail I should add: in virtually all of the cases where I have the silent missed calls, I have full or adequate service, and can otherwise use my phone. Internet browsing, apps, and as mentioned even wifi calling via whatsapp etc.. works fine. Even so, in a scenario where I have missed a call due to spotty service, the expected behavior once I have service again is I see the missed call on my device. That's the aggravating part of this issue: I never know someone tried to call me.
Yeah phone working, sit by it, and realise when checking the phone, for reasons unknown there's a recent missed call - that is the worst, especially if it's important and you've been waiting on a reply for a few days for them to have the time to call back. Often I wonder if the person only rang for a second or less, not long enough for the network to ring the phone but at times I get a voice mail ... so maybe not. BTW, I don't so much mean a spotty network, just spotty voice calls over the network, where it seems there's not enough signal to carry the voice - apparently - but yet still capable for data over a hotspot delivering 100 to 300 kB/s minimum depending on factors like weather or time of day. From what I understand voice data is compressed via voice specific codecs. Most don't use more than 64 kB/s. I think the silent calls are intermittent and by the time I've realised it would be probably pointless to test, however much of the time I could not say if the phone's browser was loading slow or fast as I rarely use any of the phone's functions apart from calls, plain sms texts, occasion to rare use of browser with preloaded tabs and creating a hotspot. Likewise though not quite the same, over the past years I've had networks where the phone might ring but it is not situated well enough for the signal to be able to carry out any sort of conversation - and yet via a hotspot, downloading near to 1 MB/s without skipping a beat. I still get some automated phone systems that are apparently not happy with the amount of voice data they are receiving even though what I hear is quite clear, and at times, have from near same time and spot, just rung other people who have not reported any difficulties hearing me. I've eventually learned to just hang up once the menu system goes awry and try a few hours later.
- gruez
>Hypothesis: A growing number of cellular subscribers don't care enough or use voice calls as much, so (regardless of motive/feelings) cellular providers have found they can simply reduce quality without losing customers.
This makes absolutely zero sense because calls take negligible bandwidth, especially with VoLTE. Not to mention the whole premise isn't even internally consistent. "People don't use it enough, so let's try to save money by making them use it even less! But only randomly and at the margins, so we still have to keep everything running!"
- SnorkelTan
They should remove unlimited voice calls and make everyone using the phone network pay by the minute. It would eliminate robodialing instantly.
- saturn8601
Oh man, did I go through this hell with a lot of MVNOs like two years ago. Pushed me to buy T-Mobile's most expensive plan. Something I actually regret to this day now, because I'm not sure if I got any real tangible benefit from it compared to all the money that went down the drain. However, now that I think about it, I don't feel like I've been getting too many ghost calls as I used to. It's hard for me to measure because in the last two years, I've been getting less overall calls as more of my colleagues transition to just texting.
I doubt QCI levels are affected by this. I think Call handshakes are QCI 5 and the calls themselves are QCI 1 but im not an expert.
Have you tried disabling 5G and dropping back down to 4G? I heard that the transition from VoLTE to VoNR might still be sketchy and not fully solidified. Just turn off data altogether and see for a while to see if that improves things.
Maybe porting your primary number to a cloud PBX service like Google Voice or some business oriented service? When someone calls your number, the carrier-to-carrier SIP handshake happens on Google's redundant enterprise servers instead of targeting your sleeping iPhone. Google's servers instantly answer the routing request, hopefully preventing a timeout. GV then forwards the call to your iPhone's GV app using a standard data push notification, hopefully waking the phone reliably?
Just throwing ideas out. If you've tried these already, apologies for the redundancy.
- corbins
When is the last time a flagship phone release promoted its qualities as a telephone, like call fidelity? Others could better comment on this but I think landlines were leagues better in latency and sound quality. Kinda integral pieces to the experience of talking to someone.
- sinabis
I totally agree. Driving on the autobahn and calling someone gets worse and worse. They are decreasing the number of people having a call at once. The Quality with Signal/WhatsApp Audio seems better than cellular.