Getting home phone to work on mobile router.

We use a Smarty sim card. We use a Huawei b535-333 (soyealink by name) unlocked. Every thing works fine on the mobile broadband side. The Soyealink has a land phone connection, but our land phone will not work with the Smarty. However when I tried my EE card in the Soyealink, the land phone worked. I also have an unlocked ZTE MF286D (ex 3). Using the same Smarty sim card everything works fine on the mobile broadband, but now our phone works. Can anyone explain why the Soyealink does not work the land line phone but the ZTE does work it? Is there a setting on the Soyealink I need to change.

Hi,

I'm also having bother getting a home phone working on a mobile router, presumably the lack of replies means we're in a minority, and nobody else is wanting to do this.

I have a Huawei B311 & the Smarty SIM that came with it.

It works for internet and for sending & receiving SMS texts, and it will make outgoing calls with an ordinary BT landline phone. When network selection is set to auto, it defaults to 4G for data and texts, but it automatically switches to 3G when I make an outgoing telephone call. If I set the network selection manually telephony will only work on 3G.

The problem is that if I want to receive incoming calls it wont work unless I manually set it to '3G only' in advance, it's not capable of automatically switching when the incoming call is made.

I've spent a lot of time emailing Smarty about this, and after going round in circles with the router setup, they have told me:

"I checked with technical team for voice calls your postcode has 3G only there is no 4G for voice calling".

Which doesn't square with what their own coverage checker says: "you'll have excellent coverage for 4G calls, texts, and mobile internet"

Smarty are telling me that phone users in my area also have to manually switch to 3G before they can receive an incoming call, which doesn't sound very likely to me.

In reply to a post by vhf:

I'm also having bother getting a home phone working on a mobile router, presumably the lack of replies means we're in a minority, and nobody else is wanting to do this.

It is highly unlikely either Huawei mobile router is designed to do the 4G Calling (known as Voice over LTE) protocol as they are not sold for this. That they do 3G calling is interesting, but useless in the UK in the next 12 to 18 months as the networks turn off 3G.

You should look at using a VoIP service and an app on a phone or computer that does the voice, and use the mobile router as a data connection.

The manual says that it supports both VoIP and VoLTE. The reason I bought the Huawei router is that it has a phone jack on it, unlike any of the others I looked at.

Edited by vhf (Sat 16-Dec-23 16:11:03)

In reply to a post by vhf:

The manual says that it supports both VoIP and VoLTE.

But do any of the UK networks sell it? No?? Then you have the same problem as imported phones that aren't sold in the UK, from ebay/amazon/alibaba etc.

Some work, many do not, and some only do 4G Calling on EE. You have the same problem, as your router will use similar electronics inside.

Each of the UK mobile phone network is different, SMARTY is Three's virtual network, and they may not support the same options as EE, or O2, or Vodafone. Then you have the other virtual networks such as Voxi (Vodafone) or Giffgaff (O2) or 1pMobile (EE).

4G Calling (VoLTE) is a complicated technology, and is not the same as VoIP to an internet voice provider such as those discussed in the VoIP forum. (sipgate, AAISP etc).

Edited by jchamier (Sat 16-Dec-23 16:38:51)

So what is a router doing that's different to a mobile phone, and why?

Almost no mobile routers have voice ports.

The mass market phones are tested by the mobile networks. Your router isn’t tested ; as almost nobody uses it for voice.

Edited by jchamier (Sat 16-Dec-23 21:46:51)

The firmware for all the Huawei routers is horrendous, I like a lot of people have had these devices in the past and given up trying to use the sim card within the router for voice calls as its just not worth it due to switching back to 3G for making and receiving calls.

The Tenda 4G06 is an excellent little VoLTE box for £60.

For VoLTE to work on any 4g router, you will need VoLTE support and also a suitable VoLTE/IMS configuration file. This may or may not be present on the router(s) you have been trying out So, the MNO or MVNO must support VoLTE and you need to have the correct config. So, it may work on one network but not on another.

3G fallback is simpler since it does not involve SIP but is simply Call Control signalling which is the same on all networks