Disable MMS/Texting over WiFi

Hey @LawnMower, Intermittent issues are the pits because temporary fixes make things seem fine and then they break again. One thing that I have seen with intermittent messaging issues for SMS or MMS is congestion in the “mailbox” rather than the network side. If the messaging app that you are using (messages on your phone or messages.google.com) has too many messages saved, new ones have a hard time finding a “place to sit.” Restarting the phone will usually free up enough temporary memory to allow the messages that are pending to come in, but new ones are stopped at the door. MMS are larger files by nature and are usually the first to be affected. Have you had a chance to go through your messaging apps and delete as many messages as possible?

I’m having the EXACT issues LawnMower described. It started a few days ago out of nowhere and now its 11/1/23.  The lack of group text is really difficult as we were in the process of coordinating funeral arrangements for a family member and I can’t communicate effectively. 

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My problem disappeared for almost 8 months, but reappeared last week with a new wrinkle.  This time, I was able to send MMS messages but I couldn’t receive them.  Moreover, whereas I got a notification in my messaging app last time I had this problem, I got no notification this time.  I tried rebooting my phone to no avail.  Having no other choice, I decided to call T-Mobile support.

I spent a fair bit of time on the phone with a fairly knowledgeable rep, who took me through a series of steps to fix or at least diagnose the problem, but those steps failed.  He decided to open a ticket on my behalf with T-Mobile’s engineering group, and he agreed to get back to me within three business days with their findings.

(The phone started working correctly again later that day and it’s been working fine for over a week.)

Well, he never got back to me, so I called support again and asked them to look up the status of my ticket.  He looked up the ticket and told me the engineering team hadn’t done anything yet and forwarded me over to the engineering team.  At that point, I was talking to someone who knew what he was doing.  He told me they had made some changes on “their end” (not to my phone) that corrected the way it was connecting to T-Mo’s messaging infrastructure.  He didn’t tell me exactly what they did, but he did say that if the problem recurred, I’d need to go into a T-Mo store and either get a new phone or a new SIM card, referencing my ticket number.

I’d suggest that anyone with this problem contact T-Mo support and request that a ticket be opened, and then follow up on it until it gets resolved.  It seems like there is something wrong with the way T-Mo’s infrastructure is communicating with certain Android phones.  (This problem has never occurred on my wife’s iPhone.)  Mine is a OnePlus 10 Pro 5G, in case that matters.  (I’ll never have another OnePlus phone, but that’s a topic for another thread…)

Good luck getting this resolved!

is your regular mobile data still turned on?

I’m starting to think this problem is congestion-related.  I saw it on Thanksgiving.  I saw it again when we had severe thunderstorms rolling through our area, and again today as this “monster storm” begins to arrive.  My guess is that everyone and their dog is texting their friends and family in these cases.

Of course, I could be wrong.  But, as I tried to say earlier (post is being “moderated), my problem is not wifi calling related.

I’m late to this discussion but I just wanted to add that I just “discovered” this problem, i.e., sporadically cannot send or receive MMS with wifi calling active.  I have a OnePlus 10 Pro 5G that I purchased from T-Mobile.

I send and receive a lot of MMS messages, and I’m understanding the only “fix” for this issue is to disable wifi calling in the phone’s settings.  That’s a shame.

Is there any real fix for this issue?

Thanks.

you cant just hold the text you want to delete to mark it then keep clicking your way down the list  to mark the next ones you want included to be deleted?

I don’t normally recommend downloading apps that manipulate your phone like that because it could unintentionally affect other things as well. If you have a ton of messages and don’t feel like you can do it manually, then do what is best for you. I just wanted to give you some caution. Let me know how it goes

I went ahead and downloaded an app that does backup to my Google drive.  It works well and I can access the backed up messages and attachments through it.  That way I can save any pictures I’d like to save.

After backing up and verifying that it worked, I went through the fairly laborious job of deleting all the texts, including spam and blocked, from my phone.  That took a few minutes but now it’s done.

The next step is to see if all that had any effect on my “failure to send” and “unable to download” problem.  I’ll report back here with anything I learn.

Thanks again to all for the help.

is it both regular texts and mms having issues or just regular texts?

keep in mind that mms messages (group texts, pic texts and or super long winded texts) need a data connection to be sent/received. regular texts just the voice side

It’s just MMS for me.  If an MMS fails, I can send a regular text to one of the intended recipients without difficulty.  I will key an eye open for possible regular SMS issues now.

I understand the need for data to support MMS.  I’ve disabled wifi only for the messaging apps just now but left mobile data enabled.  In this thread, and others around the net, I’ve noticed that MMS failures are common when wifi calling is enabled.  It’s been that way for at least 5 years if I’m reading things correctly.

Edited to add:  This problem started occurring on Thanksgiving Day, and I attributed it to high volumes, but it has been happening intermittently since then.

Thanks for helping.

Same with me; just MMS failures when on WiFi only.  Regular texts work fine.  Enabling and disabling WiFi calling had no effect with me.  It wasn’t until I forced the text app to always use mobile data that the delay sending and failures stopped.  

So far, I’ve only noticed it happening with my home wifi; I seldom connect to wifi at other locations, but I’ll keep my eyes open.  To reiterate, this problem has been rare for quite a long time on the same home wifi and router.  It’s gotten much worse since Thanksgiving.

Since I disabled wifi on the messaging app, I get a nag about it every time I open the messaging application.  That’s annoying!  But, so far, MMS is working with hit disabled.