Vodafone and VoLTE (Australia)

I have just bought a Vodafone sim card in the hope that my L5 will continue to work in Australia given that it appears that my long time Telstra card probably won’t work when they switch to VOLTE at the end of August. Hopefully someone can help me here.

I live in regional NSW (Nth). I got the Vodafone card up and running at home yesterday and was able to make/receive calls but with 3G. Its my understanding that Vodafone have shut down their 3G network so that part confuses me. Worked perfectly.

Today I’m in town and the phone is showing 4G and working perfectly. On voice calls it stays on 4G whereas I did see that some time back (Jan I think) people were having Vodafone drop to 3G on voice calls. Not so with me. I don’t see anything on the phone to indicate it is using VOLTE.

I check the Vodafone network map and according to that there is no 3G to be seen where I live. So being a total amateur with phones I’m not sure what I’m getting.

Is there a way to tell on the L5 if it is using VOLTE? I have done the firmware thing and its all up to date etc so I am hoping that this is working as it should. I don’t think that I need to “enable” VOLTE as is shows “VoLTE enable” with a tick in the BM818 tool.

And I am puzzled as to the 3G capability at home if Vodafone have supposedly turned off 3G.

So I am hoping that someone in Australia who is more across this can enlighten. I’m hoping that its all good for VOLTE for me!

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@irvinewade

Just doing some research now I found this link (updated 5 Apr 24):

This tells me that the pre paid Vodafone card that have in my phone is using VoLTE. I hope, but am still interested in hearing from the more learned people here.

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You mean other than that the phone stays on 4G! (which is different from what happens before one enables VoLTE e.g. before that was even possible on the Librem 5).

To be honest, I just took the 3G/4G indicator’s word for it but I think there is a shell command that would be more definitive. I’m thinking mmcli but I can’t find the right incantation in the forum right now.

I too have been puzzled by this. I assume (warnings apply) that it is because my plan uses the Vodafone network mostly but will also roam under sharing (roaming) arrangements to one of the other two networks (I lost track of whether it’s Optus or Telstra with all the ACCC blah blah blah and the TPG-Vodafone merger blah blah blah) and neither Optus nor Telstra has shut off 3G yet - so even if you think you are using Voda as your provider, you may still find yourself on 3G. In particular, the sharing arrangement may permit only 3G when roamed i.e. no 4G data and hence or otherwise no VoLTE. So I hope and/or assume that once Optus and Telstra finish their jobs (later this year), 3G will finally be completely banished from my phone.

I think I have commented elsewhere in this forum regarding how my phone takes 10(?) minutes after boot to settle down, initially saying 4G data, then saying 3G no data, then eventually 4G data. I think it wants to sniff both the Voda network and the roaming partner network to see which is offering the best signal, and this results in things wobbling around until it finishes that process. Again, after the 3G shutdown I would expect different behaviour.

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Thanks for that. I didn’t know that as I had been seeing 4G with my Telstra card before I got the Vodafone card. So I am now pretty confident that VoLTE is a goer for me.

Interestingly when I was getting 3g at home it was showing that the network being used was Vodafone (Voda AU) which may mean nothing of course.

This is a great outcome as it means that the L5 will be a usable phone for me. Probably no coverage at home but that doesn’t worry me at all. And yes, my phone also takes a while to settle down after booting to get into its correct mindset etc.

Thanks so much for the reply.

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Found the incantation that I was previously searching for but not finding. Example post: List of Apps that fit and function well [Post them here.] - #313 by amarok

Note that there is more than one way to execute an AT command and note that I didn’t test using that AT command myself (I probably ought to).

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Thanks for that. I did give it a try at work and got a didn’t recognise ‘socat’ command. I will give it more of a shot tomorrow. It may have been an operator error as I ran out of time.

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You need to install package socat in that case for the socat command.

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Ah, thanks for that. I won’t gonthat far at the moment. It all seems good so I’ll see how things go.

Thanks very much for your input and expertise!

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