WiFi calling drops calls on Iphone shortly after connecting

[Big-Gee]

My wife has an Iphone14 whith fully up to date IOS s/w . I have Android Pixel 7A which again has a  fully up to date OS . We both use Smarty (A wholly owned MVO division of THREE) sims, but the signal within the house varies from weak to none in this rural area. I find Wifi calling works fine to receive and make calls on my Android phone, whilst she on the other hand will recieve a call over wifi calling which then drops after a short period of say, 10-15seconds after answering. If she makes a call, this is similarly short, but can sometimes be longer in some parts of the house, before deteriorating into a distorted or one sided conversation, and she hears nothing from the other party. 

Has anyone had a similar experience where Iphone device do not perform well with WiFi calling, but Android phones do ?

[licquorice]

Not sure what this has to do with BT, it is clearly yet another shortcoming of Apple products.

[Kimberlin]

@Big-Gee   Your Wife could try a network reset on her iPhone. Go into settings, type Reset Network Settings into the search box, press Reset and select Network Settings option. The phone will reboot but you will have to put your home WiFi password back in to connect. Your carrier settings will also update if they are not already current.

Check then that WiFi calling is enabled in mobile settings.

Not saying any of that will resolve the situation, but worth trying. I use WiFi calling all the time at home on my iPhone, no issues.

Hope you resolve it 👍

[Big-Gee]

There may be some truth in that, however, when another user reported it, on a Cellular operator's forum, it turned out to be related to a Roaming assistant/Band steering issue within the WiFi Access point's radio configuration. This is the part which encourages devices with weak signals to roam to a stronger one. The configuration for which, is not accessible for me to inspect. I didnt really want presume a connection at this early stage, but I would like to understand whether others had come across a similar situation .

[licquorice]

You can verify if that is the cause by simply temporarily turning off one  one of the bands to see if that improves things. Probably best to turn off the 5Ghz band.

[Big-Gee]

This has already been tried

[licquorice]

So isn't the cause then.

[Big-Gee]

Thanks, I hesitated as it's a bit laborious , but relented in the end, but alas, no change

[Big-Gee]

So, having looked at similar issues in other, non BT forums I discovered several examples where other people were having similar issues. Not all were using BT smart hub 2 routers, but threads connecting them suggested a problem with carrier handoff/signal quality issues, particularly where a meshed AP, or in my case, a WiFi disc was used. One solution found, required the iPhone user, upon receiving a call which degraded almost immediately on answering, was to switch their phone to Airplane mode and swith the WiFi back on. This method worked, but is hardly an ideal solution. Others have fixed it by switching off the roaming assist/band steering option in their router, however this is not a user accessible parameter wherr BT supplies the smart hub 2 router.

Is there any way to access this parameter to see if this provides more elegant solution? 

[licquorice]

No

You have already discounted band steering by disabling one band. You can prevent any roaming between sources by standing still whilst making the call.