Post by Mike Harding on Jul 13, 2024 13:12:14 GMT 10
I expect most of you know the mobile phone 3G network in Australia is shutting down permanently about now and all mobile traffic in future will use the 4G and 5G networks.
This change has produced some complex technical issues which "The Authorities" were too stupid or uninterested to bother about. Some of the issues are:
Voice calls cannot natively be made over 4G, to make them your handset must support VoLTE, what's worse is it must support an implementation of VoLTE which is also supported by your Australian carrier - Telstra/Optus/Vodafone. Hopefully this issue is well understood by now. There is a number to which you may send a SMS to check your handset's VoLTE capability - however this number often returns a negative result to a handset which is actually VoLTE capable, so don't spend $400 on a new handset without double checking.
What is much more important, and more complex, is roaming and emergency calling:
Roaming: briefly because it won't affect most, even if your handset supports VoLTE and works in Australia there is no guarantee it will roam overseas even in countries with which your carrier has agreements. How you check whether it will or not I have no idea and neither does anyone else, despite what they may tell you.
Emergency calling - 000 or 112
Now things get really interesting. Your handset which works happily on 4G VoLTE and allows you to make voice calls following total 3G closure may not work when you attempt to make an E000 (emergency call). It seems 000/112 is handled as a "special case" under 4G and there is no way I know of (or anyone else!) telling whether the damn thing actually works or not. If your handset was bought from your Australian carrier within the last five years it *probably* supports E000 calling under VoLTE but I'll not take bets on it.
If, like me, you have a handset (two in my case) imported from overseas which work perfectly well under VoLTE in Australia then my guess is the chance of them making a successful E000 call on 4G is totally unknown.
To make matters worse: there is no way to assess whether your handset is E000 compliant other than making a test call to 000/112 which is not what we want millions of people to do.
As I suggested: a total dog's breakfast! I'll post more information to this thread as it comes to light but don't expect anything ground breaking any time soon.
Note: VoLTE = Voice over Long Term Evolution
This change has produced some complex technical issues which "The Authorities" were too stupid or uninterested to bother about. Some of the issues are:
Voice calls cannot natively be made over 4G, to make them your handset must support VoLTE, what's worse is it must support an implementation of VoLTE which is also supported by your Australian carrier - Telstra/Optus/Vodafone. Hopefully this issue is well understood by now. There is a number to which you may send a SMS to check your handset's VoLTE capability - however this number often returns a negative result to a handset which is actually VoLTE capable, so don't spend $400 on a new handset without double checking.
What is much more important, and more complex, is roaming and emergency calling:
Roaming: briefly because it won't affect most, even if your handset supports VoLTE and works in Australia there is no guarantee it will roam overseas even in countries with which your carrier has agreements. How you check whether it will or not I have no idea and neither does anyone else, despite what they may tell you.
Emergency calling - 000 or 112
Now things get really interesting. Your handset which works happily on 4G VoLTE and allows you to make voice calls following total 3G closure may not work when you attempt to make an E000 (emergency call). It seems 000/112 is handled as a "special case" under 4G and there is no way I know of (or anyone else!) telling whether the damn thing actually works or not. If your handset was bought from your Australian carrier within the last five years it *probably* supports E000 calling under VoLTE but I'll not take bets on it.
If, like me, you have a handset (two in my case) imported from overseas which work perfectly well under VoLTE in Australia then my guess is the chance of them making a successful E000 call on 4G is totally unknown.
To make matters worse: there is no way to assess whether your handset is E000 compliant other than making a test call to 000/112 which is not what we want millions of people to do.
As I suggested: a total dog's breakfast! I'll post more information to this thread as it comes to light but don't expect anything ground breaking any time soon.
Note: VoLTE = Voice over Long Term Evolution
