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Cell Phone Calls Using WiFi on an RT-AX86U Don't Go Through (Intermittently)

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Pegasus9

Regular Contributor
I am using WiFi calling on my Android cell phone connecting to my RT-AX86U Intermittently (the worst kind of problem) inbound calls will not come through and they get sent to voicemail. Also text messages will not go out. If I turn the phone's WiFi off, the problem goes away.

The WiFi signal is strong and I have tried using 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz for the network with the same result.

Running Merlin firmware: 3004.388.4
ISP is XFinity (cable)

Has anyone had this issue before?
 
No, my AX86U on same FW works fine for WiFi-Calling with iPhone8+ and iPhone 13, both on iOS 16.6.

It may be an Android problem, so troubleshoot using any up-to-date iPhone?
 
No, my AX86U on same FW works fine for WiFi-Calling with iPhone8+ and iPhone 13, both on iOS 16.6.

It may be an Android problem, so troubleshoot using any up-to-date iPhone?
My daughter-in-law has an Apple phone but it will be a week before she's in for a visit. Thanks for the input, I hadn't thought about seeing if it was OS specific
 
I am using WiFi calling on my Android cell phone connecting to my RT-AX86U Intermittently (the worst kind of problem) inbound calls will not come through and they get sent to voicemail. Also text messages will not go out. If I turn the phone's WiFi off, the problem goes away.
Using Android 12 on a cellphone with WiFi Calling enabled and do not seem to be experiencing such a problem (knock on wood) with texts or phone calls using 3004.388.4 on a RT-AX86U Pro connected to a fiber Ont.

Maybe a problem with the upstream device (modem, router, etc.) from Comcast being misconfigured or how the router is configured and connected to upstream device.
 
Using Android 12 on a cellphone with WiFi Calling enabled and do not seem to be experiencing such a problem (knock on wood) with texts or phone calls using 3004.388.4 on a RT-AX86U Pro connected to a fiber Ont.

Maybe a problem with the upstream device (modem, router, etc.) from Comcast being misconfigured or how the router is configured and connected to upstream device.
I have spoken to the level 2 techs and they say everything should work fine. Never thought about modem involvement.
 
I have spoken to the level 2 techs and they say everything should work fine. Never thought about modem involvement.

Unless your entire internet is going up and down, the modem wouldn't be impacting wifi calling. You could run a constant ping to google.com or wherever and see if there are brief periods of dropped packets, maybe your internet is having short outages?

Are you sure your phone isn't grabbing a weak cell signal (not enough to get a successful call but enough to make it switch off wifi calling)? Try setting it to wifi preferred if not already, or better yet putting it in airplane mode while at home just as a test (with wifi enabled obviously).

If not that I'd say it is more likely the carrier's system having problems than something in the router, but obviously anything is possible. Maybe check their support forums to see if others are complaining?

Off the top of my head I can't recall if APN settings will impact wifi calling at all, but if you're using the default APN then it should have the right settings regardless. Same with SIM card, while it wouldn't directly impact wifi calling connectivity there is a slight chance it is impacting the registration of the phone on the network. But you'd think it would be an all or nothing situation in that case, not intermittent.

Are you using any VPN in the router or any other special settings (port forwarding, firewall rules, parental controls, etc)? To rule anything like that out you could do a hard reset on the router and configure just the basics, see if the behavior goes away. Could even be aiprotection interfering for some reason, so don't turn that back on until you've thoroughly tested with just minimal stuff enabled.
 
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I have no issues with my Cisco wireless APs doing Wi-Fi calling. I use an Arris 8200 modem.
I live in an old home where cell is not real strong inside, so I depend on Wi-Fi calling. I use Spectrum.
 
I'm a public facing IT tech, I'm inundated with people in the UK having this issue, although it seems cross network, and effecting android to a certain degree, the majority having problems are using iPhones, and the network having the most issues are using EE.

Turning off WiFi to test it, but you can also turn off WiFi calling (even in iPhone you can turn off WiFi calling) and still use your WiFi.

Bring back the Huawei hardware on cell masts, they coped 10x better than the current junk they're using and it's forcing WiFi calling even in areas with full signal.

S
 
One other think I'm aware of is Wifi calling over ipv6.
I've seen quite a few cases where wifi calling was working fine over ipv4, but not over ipv6. Highly dependent of ISP setup for IPv6. Dual stack usually works fine, but NAT624 (or CGNat) is often problematic.
 
I'm a public facing IT tech, I'm inundated with people in the UK having this issue, although it seems cross network, and effecting android to a certain degree, the majority having problems are using iPhones, and the network having the most issues are using EE.

Turning off WiFi to test it, but you can also turn off WiFi calling (even in iPhone you can turn off WiFi calling) and still use your WiFi.

Bring back the Huawei hardware on cell masts, they coped 10x better than the current junk they're using and it's forcing WiFi calling even in areas with full signal.

S
I am still dealing with this issue, did y0u ever find a solution?
 
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