WIFI Calling Preferences Being Forced to Cellular Preferred

Userlevel 1

I’d like to refresh this very old thread. T-Mobile still refuses to fix this issue. I am now on a Galaxy 23. The same thing has been going on 4+ years.

They still “automagically” change this setting to Cellular Preferred. They have no business ever touching this setting. It is simply a customer preference. A preference should have nothing to do with what is actually happening while a phone moves.

What should happen (obviously) is that when a phone move to a location where there is no Wi-Fi they should (silently) change over to the cell network. IF the customer has Wi-Fi preferred and they go back to a location with Wi-Fi they should silently change over to Wi-Fi. There is absolutely no need for this user preference to ever change unless the user changes it manually.

I have tried to explain this simple concept to T-Mobile reps on at least 7 occasions (including over an hour today). For whatever reason they are completely unable to understand this simple concept. This is very, very frustrating!

ONCE I actually got a rep who understood the issue the first time I explained it. She finally said she’d refer to up the line. Obviously nothing happened (in 18+ months).

I don’t understand why T-Mobile is so resistant to fixing this issue.

BTW, I know that Verizon does not do this. I don’t think AT&T does either, but I haven’t tried them.

M

D

dbrons
First activity
1 reply
4 months ago
13 May 2023

I am experiencing my WIFI Calling Preferences always being forced to “cellular preferred”, as are others. I live in an area with poor T-mobile mobile data signal and this recent behavior makes my phone unable to make and receive calls and text messages. I believe the problem only started happening after the next to last T-Mobile software update. Everything was fine for my first 5 months of ownership. A Google search shows posts of other users experiencing the same issue, but no options other than a tedious workaround of manually switching the phone to Airplane mode and changing the WIFI calling preferences back to “WIFI preferred”. I have to do this kind of process each time I enter and leave my home, and sometimes have to reboot my phone as well. The times I’ve forgotten, I’ve missed package deliveries and went to a doctor appointment when the doctor had left a message that he was out sick. This appears to be a carrier specific issue as far as I can see. I even tried replacing my rock solid Netgear R6400 router with an ASUS AX3000 router with no resulting changes. I’m in a small apartment only 10 feet from the router, with a very strong WIFI signal. I have two Samsung Galaxy S20 phones (March 2020) which both exhibit the exact same behavior. I spoke with T-Mobile Tech support which appeared to be clueless about this issue other than to send me two new S20 phones under warranty to my T-Mobile store. I do not have high confidence in this approach but will try the new phones and report back.

Does anyone know anything more? I am not aware of T-Mobile publicly acknowledging this issue.

Yes, still having this issue though less often for the past six months or so. I thought it was fixed but has gone back to switching to cellular preferred lately. It seems to change sometimes when there is no wifi, but does not change back when I get home with good wifi, but very poor cellular. So, yeah, makes no sense and very detrimental if you forget to check it every time you get home. I'm likely to leave T-Mobile due to this issue.

And no I don't know any more about what T-Mobile has done. I got tired of calling and reporting this issue a year ago.

J

So frustrating to find such an old thread, on a topic that has not been answered.

We live outside cell-signal range. Way back when, Wi-Fi calling was THE reason we had T-Mobile in the first place.

And we are still being frustrated by automatic resetting to "cellular preferred" MULTIPLE TIMES DAILY, disrupting our communications.

T

tonyguinta
First activity
1 reply
3 months ago
25 June 2023

Very frustrating that this issue has persisted for years and across multiple devices. I usually only think to check the setting when my call quality is bad, and sure enough it's switched back to "cellular preferred".

WIFI Calling Preferences Being Forced to Cellular Preferred

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