Yet another Hacker News

8 points tkdb 1 day ago 15 comments

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.

sinabis 1 day ago | parent

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.

tkdb 1 day ago | parent

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.

anenefan 23 hours ago | parent

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.

tkdb 11 hours ago | parent

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.

anenefan 9 hours ago | parent

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. [1] [2] [3] 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.

[1] https://www.gl.com/voice-codecs.html (has the codecs with a breakdown below the table)

[2] https://mobilepacketcore.com/glossary/codecs-audio-and-video... (brief overview including media streams )

[3] https://phoneguides.org/voice-codecs/ (Iffy coded site, refused older firefox, janky with a fairly recent chrome based browser)

KyleSanderson 1 hour ago | parent

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.

SnorkelTan 44 minutes ago | parent

They should remove unlimited voice calls and make everyone using the phone network pay by the minute. It would eliminate robodialing instantly.

what 30 minutes ago | parent

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.

drewnick 12 minutes ago | parent

tello gets you close in the US, a few dollars a month minimum ($5 maybe?) I use it on my burner flip phone.

goshx 4 minutes ago | parent

spam calls are not free, but the cost is very low.

autoexec 4 minutes ago | parent

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.

kelnos 42 minutes ago | parent

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?

cyberax 24 minutes ago | parent

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.

cprayingmantis 18 minutes ago | parent

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.