Ask HN: Hypothesis: Cellular providers are deprioritizing voice calls?
3 days ago
I switched from Verizon to T-Mobile, specifically because there were too many silent missed calls. Silent meaning my device never showed I had a missed call.
This was a pattern across more than a year, spanning multiple devices (all iphones). It happens on both wifi and cellular. It happens with wifi calling enabled and disabled. It happens with people I call every day, in my address book, as well as new contacts (say someone I met who called to follow up). I called support, searched online, reset network settings multiple times at different points months apart.
After being on T-Mobile for about a year, the degraded service is about the same as Verizon. Every week, more than once, people call me, my phone never rings, and I never see a missed call on my device. It happens at home, at work, on work trips in different states.
I still get missed calls regularly and my device shows I missed the call. It seems like a certain % of callers get my VM, but I never know the call attempt happened. The missed calls never appear later on my phone (like a late VM or text deliver, coming minutes or sometimes hours after it was sent).
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.
>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!"
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.
I use and am thrilled with US mobile. Otherwise no affiliation. Lots of different options, including which backbone network you're line is currently on, and as far as I can tell the options are all switchable online with very little fuss.
They should remove unlimited voice calls and make everyone using the phone network pay by the minute. It would eliminate robodialing instantly.
telemarketers were a thing before cell phones and they weren't just calling homes in their local calling area. The economics must have made it worth their phone bills. I'm also not a fan of punishing everyone to make things a little harder for a small number of assholes.
I wish they would bring back prepaid/pay as you go service. I want a number where I can receive/send an occasional call or text without having to pay a monthly contract.
That very much does exist still? https://reddit.com/r/nocontract
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I'm still on tracfone. Started their service around 2010 and other than a janky website, the phone service is fine. The phones are cheap (I think mine was sub $80) and use a $99 per year "PLAN" card that gets 400 minutes, 400 texts, 1.5 GB data that triples to 1200/1200/4.5GB because it is a smartphone.
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mint is great (if you dont mind tmobile), hard to beat $15/m for unlimited txt talk. the base data has gone up a few gb 6? but i never really use it
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tello gets you close in the US, a few dollars a month minimum ($5 maybe?) I use it on my burner flip phone.
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spam calls are not free, but the cost is very low.
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.
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I've noticed a number of modem issues. I don't think this is actually related to network behavior. Pixels specifically when roaming up until the 9 had severe issues typically after 24 hours with full disconnects. The majority of users don't roam, and when they do they blame the network, but I'm becoming more inclined to believe this is an end-device issue.
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.
>When is the last time a flagship phone release promoted its qualities as a telephone, like call fidelity?
Because nobody calls anymore. If anything calling is considered rude compared to texting, to the extent that some text first before calling.
>Others could better comment on this but I think landlines were leagues better in latency and sound quality.
landline latency (near instant, if you're both on the same CO) is basically impossible to achieve with a digital system, because of all the buffers and packets involved.
Locally Verizon coverage has regressed over the past few years and I’m beginning to think about switching to T-Mobile myself. Verizon used to be the king of rural coverage but they’ve increasingly been usurped by T-Mobile who are putting equipment on rural towers at an increased rate.
Huh, I haven't seen anything like this. I've been on T-Mobile forever. I don't make many voice calls (maybe one or two per week, at most), but I receive a decent amount. I haven't noticed situations where I'll notice a call came in only because it went to voicemail without ringing.
So I don't know. I believe that you're experiencing what you're experiencing, but I'm not sure the cause is what you're thinking it is, because it would be weird for carriers to only deprioritize incoming calls for some subscribers (like you) and not others (like me).
But maybe it's also the case that the cell towers in my area aren't starved for capacity, but they are where you live?
As T-Mobile was rolling out 5G they dropped support for 3G and possibly some older standards/protocols. If you have an oldish phone that may be the problem.
Settings > Apps > Phone > Screen Unknown Callers > Never
Are you sure you don't have any misbehaving spam detectors? The voice circuits are VERY robust, low bandwidth, and cellular providers prioritize voice calls. There's just no reason to purposefully throttle the voice calls, the bandwidth savings would be negligible.
But it's possible that your cellular provider has misconfigured STIR/SHAKEN validation and/or some badly behaving spam call detection.
Google is currently carrying out a "call screening" experiment on Pixel phone "owners" (mentioned, but cannot be disabled in the app settings). OP is specifically mentioning iphone, though.
What on Earth are you talking about? Pixel Call Screening has been around a while (~2 years, at least), and definitely can be turned off.
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Voice "circuits" are largely a thing of the past. Most cellular calls are VoLTE or VoIP directly (though I'm certain there's shaping/QOS/etc., in play).
On the spam topic though, it is, or was, a common tactic for some spammers to do just enough on the call initialization front to generate a missed call or similar without actually ringing a device, leave no VM, the goal being to prompt you to return the call. Though this doesn't fit with the time delay aspect.
They are still separated from the regular traffic (via VLAN/VxLANs/MPLS, whatever). So your device will have a separate hidden IP (IPv6 or IPv4) that is used ONLY for voice connections, and it's typically firewalled to hell and back.
One significant reason is roaming and inter-provider calls. Internal calls can go through a fully IP-native network, but external calls often need SS7 singalling and arcane interconnects. And you really don't want your SS7 switches to be even pingable from the public network.
BTW, one thing to check: misbehaving WiFi calling. It works by establishing an IPSec connection with the ISP's infrastructure for that hidden IP. It should not be possible on a cellular connection (because what's the point?), but given the decline in technical expertise, I'd also disable it to see if it helps.
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