No incoming text/call until I make outgoing text/call

[Ni2]

Have been dealing with this problem since the first month I purchased my iPhone 4. This issue only occurs when at home and only on my iPhone. I have good signal, four to five bars. The issue is; sometimes I can not receive incoming text or cell calls until I make a single outgoing text or call. For example. Prior to going home from work the phone will be functioning normally. Once at home, I call my iPhone from my house phone and it will either go directly to voice mail or ring and ring and then go to voice mail. Incoming texts will not be received but are queued on the cell network as well as any voice messages. I will then make and outgoing tex or call and all voicemails and texts that have been queued come in all at once. Once I have "forced" the iPhone to once again function normally the issue no longer presents itself until I leave home and return. The issue is intermittent and has happens more frequent at times.

What I have done to try and remedy this is to reset everything and ultimately get a replacement phone (with the latest OS release) to unfortunately have it do the same thing. Given that I backed up my original phone and restored all data to the new phone I could have just passed what was causing this condition to the new phone in the process.

So, before I restore my phone to the factory "out of the box" condition and start all over I was wondering if anyone had experienced this and if so how was the issue solved. Currently Verizon offered a network extender. It effectively replicates a cell tower at my home and uses voice over IP but it's not free.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the phone is NOT jail broken.

Thanks

 

[Skull One]

Dial *228 and hit call.
When the voice say "To program or activate..." go ahead and press 2.

This will update you PRL (Perfered Roaming List). This list helps you communicate with certain towers that are not directly owned by VZW.

It is possible the tower near you home, while having a great signal, is owned by someone else. Until you force your phone to register on that tower, VZW basically has "lost sight" of where you are and the ability to route incomming data to you.

Since the PRL allows you to "ping" off these types of towers this could possibly resolve the issue.

 

[Ni2]

Done that and still the same. Oddly enough, my wife's iPhone has never had its roaming list updated and is still on an older OS release and has had no reception issues. Now, I wonder, when you update the roaming list is it dependent on the geographical area that the phone is currently in at the time or will it update for any and all cell towers across the U.S.?

 

[Skull One]

Now that is a question I don't have an answer for nor a good guess on even. But, we can test a theory. Can you do a *228 from your house? If memory serves, back in the old days you couldn't do a PRL update from a non-VZW tower. I don't know if that holds true today, but it might be an interesting test to run.

 

[Ni2]

Thanks skull. I give it a try.

 

[Ni2]

Well I have my answer. It's worse. Now it's happens in a larger geographical area. Still don't have any issues at work but that's the in the neighboring county. It's was strange. My wife called me while I was on the way home still in the neighboring county and no problems. I get within 20 miles from home and poof no incoming calls or texts. Called my wife from the grocery store (5 miles away from home) and all my queued texts came in and I found out that I had been called several times but the phone never rang.

I'm starting to wonder if it has anything to do with the phone at all. Anyone have some final thoughts before I restore to "new out of the box condition"?

 

[xrayeyes]

What a bizarre situation. It's hard to believe it could be the phone, what are the odds you'd get the same problem with two phones? It's too bad you didn't try the phone "naked" before you restored with all of your backed up content. That would give you the answer as to whether or not you have something corrupted in your backup. You could go ahead and wipe it clean and see what happens.

Also I know Verizon has had tower issues in different areas lately. There have been lots of reports on the forums. I had an issue myself last fall. I took it into a Verizon corporate store and they reactivated it for me and that solved my issue. The Verizon tech told me I could have done it myself if I had wanted to. When you call *228, you pick option 1 instead of option 2.

 

[Ni2]

Ok, I tried *228 option 1 and so far so good. Lets see what happens in the next few days.

 

[Ni2]

Well I have to thank you xrayeyes. It's been almost two weeks and no missed calls. I think you nailed it.

 

[Skull One]

So a full reauthorization was needed. I'll file that one away in my knowledge base.

 

[Ni2]

Have to update this now that things have been stable for a long over a month. After the problem came back and Verizon switching me to a 4s and then to a droid and then back to the 4s I did what was basically the last resort. I had Verizon issue me a new phone number. This I believe has fixed it for good. Haven't had the problem for over 2 months. Why it could not have been fixed without changing my number I will never know.

 

[Silverado8405]

A guy from work had an issue like that. He had Verizon switch to a local number instead of his Pennsylvania number and his issues went away. Same problems you were having except his only worked in the gym by the Verizon store.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk