Wifi calling won't work if provider is down?

[Gliwmaeden2]

Is it the case that wi-fi calling can only work if the provider's signal is poor, but otherwise that network is functioning?

Last Friday, Three was down for hours: not recognising my phone number via a Chatbot to report it.

Whereas this symbol normally shows when Three is poor (i.e. most of the time at home):

 

.... on Friday 1st there was no phone symbol at all.

Calling 333 from the phone, or attempting to dial any number, gave no ring tone, so it was impossible to report the fault other than moaning on a Facebook page. 

Three has belatedly begun to respond to complaints on the FB page, and I managed to reach Chat to report it on Saturday. 

About 1am on Saturday morning, Three at 333 had a message up to say there was a fault but otherwise played a "number not recognised" message, which was bizarre, as I had by now at least dialled it and heard the fault message about the outage....

So the point of my post is that, if there is a major network outage, Talktalk's wi-fi calling cannot come to our aid.

It is not a reliable alternative for reaching people when the mobile service provider fails.

[Gliwmaeden2]

Yes, it was not just a "little local difficulty". Three was effectively wiped out for most of Friday afternoon into the wee small hours, and, for some people, well into the weekend.

Shows how important it is not to have everything in one basket  - tempting if providers offer services as a bundle to make the total cheaper, but not wise.

[ferguson]

Aye, if you tried to connect on another WiFi connection I guess it wouldn't have worked either. I imagine that even if you don't directly have a signal from your provider, the interchange between your number still matters, so backend servers providing that may have failed which left you in this position? Just thinking aloud really, so forgive the lack of concrete answers.

Maybe a more learned techie can expand. Or even 3, that would be nice!  🙂

[Gliwmaeden2]

So, although it must be using my router's wi-fi, if there was nothing at Three's end, nothing could work.

Just hoped that somehow the number would exist somewhere .... people's numbers appeared not to be even registered for several hours. It created quite a panic!

The impression companies give when wi-fi calling is mentioned usually is that you can fall back on it.

It appears to be useless when it matters.

As you say, not Talktalk's fault.

So Three piggybacks on my Talktalk wi-fi most of the time?

[ferguson]

It's not "TalkTalk's WiFi calling," it is provided by your network.