Have you ever desperately needed to make a voice call with your iPhone, but the cellular signal at your location was so poor that the call wouldn’t go through?
Most of us have at one time or another, and it’s frustrating to say the least.
The next time that happens, check to see if there’s a WiFi network available that you can (safely) access.
If so, you might be able to enable WiFi Calling on your iPhone and place your call over the Internet.
When you call someone using WiFi Calling, the call is routed to your carrier’s network over the Internet instead of through a cell tower. That gives you another potential option for placing an important voice call when there’s no usable signal at your current location.
Of course you’ll obviously need access to a usable WiFi network in order to use WiFi Calling, but that’ll be the only noticeable difference from when you make a call over your carrier’s closest cell tower.
All of that being said, there are a few caveats that you need to be aware of if you’d like to give WiFi Calling a try:
1 – Your phone must be an iPhone 5C or later.
2 – Wi-Fi calling must be supported by your cellular carrier in the country that you reside in. This page has all the info on supported carriers and countries.
3 – Regardless of where you live, your particular carrier might not support some iPhone models or iOS versions.
If Wi-Fi calling is available to you, the steps listed below will enable it on your iPhone:
1 – Tap the Settings icon (it looks like a “gear” or “cog“).
2 – Tap Phone.
3 – Tap Wi-Fi Calling.
4 – Tap WiFi Calling on This…
You should now see a warning about the data your carrier will collect if you enable WiFi Calling. If you agree to allow your carrier to collect this information, tap Enable to turn WiFi Calling on.
That’s all there is to it. With WiFi Calling enabled you’ll be able to use any WiFi network that you can legally (and safely) access to place a voice call when there’s no usable cellular signal available to you.