WiFi Calling
If you suffer from poor cellular coverage in your home, read on.
Starting in 2016, the major carriers and smartphones started supporting something called WiFi Calling. When your phone senses poor cellular coverage, but has a strong WiFi connection to the Internet, it can make and receive calls over the Internet, bypassing the weak cellular network.
The major carriers (at least Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint) and recent Smartphones (iPhone 5s and above, relatively recent Android phones) support WiFi calling. Depending on your carrier, you may have to call them to make sure it is enabled on your account (usually this is free).
Turning on the feature is easy – for instance on an iPhone, go into Settings, select Cellular, and then you’ll see a Wi-Fi Calling setting. When turning this on, you’ll need to set your Emergency Contact Location in case you make 911 calls while being on WiFi. Consult a google search/carrier instructions on how to turn this on for Android or other Smartphones.
When WiFi calling is enabled, your phone will switch between the cellular network and WiFi seamlessly without you having to worry about it. It will even do soft hand off from the cellular network to your home WiFi, for instance when you arrive home on a call in your car, and vice versa.
How Good is Your WiFi?
Of course, this immediately brings up another point. How good is your WiFi Internet anyways?
First, the good news is that even if you have a crappy 2 Mbps DSL Internet connection, Wi-Fi calling should work fine since voice over Internet doesn’t use much bandwidth at all (like 0.04 Mbps).
The bigger issue is that people sometimes struggle building a robust WiFi network in their homes without WiFi dead spots. Click here for a list of technology integration companies that can help you with your WiFi network.