Forum Discussion
Texting issues when connected to WiFi
I've been having an issue for about a week now where as soon as my phone connects to Wifi, I begin having issues sending and receiving text messages. I've been having the same issue as well as my Girlfriend, her Mom, and her Daughter all having the exact same issues when on WiFi. This includes 4 different phones, 3 different Samsung models and an iPhone. All T-Mobile devices. This issue seems to only be with text messaging. No issues with calls or any type of Data or internet related App. Just sending and receiving text messages.
I called support last week because I was certain this was a known issue for many people, but was told it was not. I went through all the trouble shooting steps with the team and nothing they could do seemed to fix the issue. I cleared my cache, checked my data to ensure it was all setup correctly, I'm even now using a brand new Note 9 and still having the same issues. When I called originally I was using my s7 Edge.
I've taken a few photos where you can see the change.
When you're not on WiFi you can see the 4gLTE symbol next to the service indicator and it seems to work fine.
https://postimg.cc/image/xsv6evu2v/
As soon as I connect to WiFi, that 4gLTE symbol goes away. I'm pretty sure it never did this before.
https://postimg.cc/image/r2ep5gemv/
Then when sending I get these errors..
https://postimg.cc/image/nisrfmwhj/
On top of the issue with sending failures, sometimes after taking minutes to send, the person who is receiving the message will get up to 4 copies of the same message. I will also receive up to 4 copies of a message when getting texts. So it's an issue with incoming and outgoing.
This seems to be something that change with an update/service. Not the device or anything. When I got my note 9, the 1st thing it had me do was connect to WiFi and I immediately noticed this same issue (no 4gLTE symbol) before installing a single APP or anything.
I'd like to point out, this is not always an issue. Most time it works pretty well, however it's a daily occurrence for the last week. Happens while I have full cell and 500MB+ WiFi service.
Please advise how this is to be resolved.
Gracias,
Matthew
If the messages are only failing when the phone is using the Wi-Fi calling, this is going to be something that we will need to open an engineering support ticket for. Please gather a few examples/date/time/numbers of the failures and contáctanos so our tech care folks can get a ticket opened up for you.
Hola tmo_chris,
"cellular preferred" was at least as bad or worse - no texts were getting through while I was on a wifi network. Today I had wifi calling turned off, though, and texts are getting through promptly. So it's definitely a bad interaction between wifi calling and texting - any suggestions how to fix?
One of my work locations is in a building with solid wifi but poor cell service, so it's important for me to be able to enable wifi calling when I'm there - and still receive texts!
Gracias,
BrianHola @magenta6038965
I appreciate you doing all of that troubleshooting 😊 How did things turn out?
Hola,
I've been having the same problem for a year or more, but finally relying on texting enough to try to debug it! Regardless of wifi network I connect to, my ability to send or receive texts becomes very unreliable if I'm connected to wifi - phone will try for several minutes to download or upload a message before giving an error message. If I turn off wifi, I can then send/receive texts.
My phone is a Moto G5 Plus with Android 7.0. I'm using Messages for texting.
I have wifi calling turned on and set to "wifi preferred" - though I've just changed the latter setting to "cellular preferred" and will see in the morning if that helps. If not, my next step will be to turn off wifi calling and see what happens. Any suggestions will be appreciated!
Gracias,
BrianWhat specific phone are you using? Are you on one of the Samsung phones or on the iPhone? I want to see if the issue persists if we turn off Wi-Fi calling.
Ignoring the other phones. What can be done to resolve my issue? It seems to be getting worse.
Matthew
if this is happening on all phones on all Wi-Fi networks then it would have to be an account issue. I did not see where all phones were on the same account however T-Mobile we need to address of the line settings and make sure that everything is refreshed and that there is no specific block or other issue on the account level.
This issue happens on all wifi networks. Home, gym, work. All secure and private networks. Same goes for all others.
Do all the phones have this issue in the same wifi network? Maybe the router is at fault.
