Capacity problems on mast local to my home

[doublet]

Over the last 6 weeks I've been experiencing a very poor signal (0-2 bars) from my home address. It is very much worse in the evenings and results in calls being dropped, complete inability for one party to hear the other or just hearing garbled noise (like there's a dalek talking at the other end), and often when calls are dropped it is not possible to make another call at all for some time whereby my phone just says 'call ended' when I try. This is an extremely frustrating issue as I have no landline or other way to talk to anyone and my mobile phone does not support WiFi calling. Last year I experienced a very similar issue, again from at my home address, which took about 5/6 months for O2 to resolve. The issue was down to lack of capacity on the local mast and I'm fairly sure it's exactly the same problem I'm experiencing now. Despite the O2 status checker continually showing the network to be working fine, there is a note stating they'll be carrying out work on 23rd October 2023 to improve the network service in this area. I do not feel O2 is dealing with this issue sufficiently given the impact it causes and I'm not prepared to wait another 6 months for it to be fixed. Each time I report the problem I often receive a text a few days later saying the problem is resolved however the problems persist.

Any advice on dealing with this issue would be appreciated.

[MI5]

@doublet 

Virgin and O2 are completely different networks.

What didn't work on Virgin should work on O2 as they are a main network provider unlike Virgin.

Contact O2 as I have advised and ask them to enable wifi calling.

If you message O2 on Facebook (https://o2uk.co/O2CFB) , Twitter (https://o2uk.co/O2CTW) or Instagram (https://o2uk.co/O2CIG) , they should be able to help you with this or call them on 202 from your O2 phone.

[doublet]

Okay I've asked O2 to enable wifi calling but am thinking I'll also visit an O2 shop to get a new SIM as mine still shows Virgin. Customer services checked my phone model but advised I used WhatsApp for calls. I'll see what happens and let you guys know.  Thanks for all your help so far.

[MI5]

Good idea about getting a new O2 sim @doublet 

Take photo ID with you when you go in store to get it.

[doublet]

Well my problems seem to be getting worse..... with my new SIM all calls are coming through as 'Unknown' and I cannot find a way to activate Caller ID  despite it being enabled on the phone. Any ideas anyone?

It seems my Xperia 5 does not support wifi calling as Sony did not enable it in the firmware and I've been unable to find any modded firmware that resolves this.

I'm looking for my very old Sony Xperia X as that is supposed to support wifi calling but haven't been able to find it yet.

[doublet]

I checked the Caller ID problem and found it is a known problem so have spoken to O2 customer services who hopefully have changed the required setting to resolve this. I'll have to wait up to 24 hours to know if it does.

I asked again about wifi calling and they changed another setting for that also as they said it was setup for an iPhone rather than smartphone however I don't expect this to make any difference unless I can find a way to patch the firmware. 

[pgn]

It never rains, but it pours, @doublet. 🤷

[Bambino]

@doublet Our resident community Sony expert is @viridis. Perhaps if he sees this thread he can offer some advice.

[doublet]

Well I still don't have any caller ID so I guess I'll have to speak to customer services yet again. I found my old Sony Xperia X and put my SIM in it but there is no option to enable wifi calling. So I guess if I need to make any important calls I I'll have to leave my house and drive someone out of the area to avoid the over capacity problem. 

[doublet]

So this time O2 customer services have told me to resolve the caller ID problem I need to copy all my contacts from the phone to the SIM. Can anyone help me with this as I can't find a way to do it on my Sony Xperia 5 running Android 11?

[Oxonian]

@doublet 

I cannot find any guidance that's precisely what you are looking for, but I wonder if these might help :-

Sony Xperia 1 - Calls and contacts | Vodafone UK

"Copy contacts between your SIM and your phone". 

Overall Guide to Xperia Contacts | Sony UK

"How can I view my SIM contacts in my phone" (but you'll be trying to do this the other way around). 

Please ask again if you get stuck.