One of the reasons that I bought a new cell phone was that I was having coverage problems. I always had good coverage with Verizon until I moved from San Diego to my new apartment in Lakeside. Inside my new apartment I would get very bad connections and dropped calls. The phone was unusable inside the apartment, but take two steps outside the door and I could make a phone call. I suspected there was some sort of interference inside the apartment so changing carriers wasn't going to solve the problem.
My old iPhone 4 wasn't able to make WiFi phone calls on Verizon. Verizon has WiFi calling but my phone and its outdated operating system could not do WiFi calling. I changed to an Android phone and went to T-Mobile for a variety of reasons that I will explain in other posts but one of the reasons was WiFi calling. I knew that I needed a new phone that was capable and a carrier that was good for WiFi calling.
WiFi calling enables you to connect to a WiFi signal which then connects you to the carrier's cell phone network. WiFi calling is not VoIP calling. VoIP (Voice over IP) actually connects to a computer network (by WiFi) but the call never gets transferred to a cell phone network but is just routed across the internet. MagicJack is an example of a VoIP product. VoIP has the advantage of using data instead of cell phone minutes. WiFi calling uses a WiFi signal to connect to the cell phone network but then uses cell phone minutes because it uses the cell tower network to route the call. It can be kind of confusing if you don't know the difference between VoIP and Wifi calling. T-Mobile's plans all have unlimited voice and text so therefore their Wifi calling is unlimited/"free." So for me T-Mobile's unlimited voice plus the positive reviews about their WiFi calling capabilities was a selling point for me.
Now that I have been on T-Mobile for a week my WiFi calling has been great. I tend to make most of my calls at home and at work so I usually am in WiFi calling distance. My phone is set to prefer a WiFi connection for calls. So far no problems and the call quality is good with no dropped calls. Other carriers have the same service but now that I have a new phone I can take advantage of this feature. In future posts I will discuss some of the reasons I switched to T-Mobile and Android but I just wanted to talk about the feature that so far has meant the most in my change to a new phone and carrier.
