Fido block VoLTE and Wifi Calling by blacklisting IMEI

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I've just got a Fido Pulse plan recently, bringing my own device, an unlocked Samsung Galaxy S8 purchased directly from Samsung. I chose Fido mainly because of VoLTE and Wifi Calling. I installed the lastest Fido firmware on my phone to make sure there is no compatibility problem with the network. The CSC code of my phone (in the settings menu) is FMC, which is the Fido one. VoLTE and Wifi Calling options are present in the settings.

When I enable VoLTE, calls still fall back on the HSPA+ network. For the Wifi Calling, when I click the link to configure the address, I receive the verification code but it tells my phone seems incompatible and to contact the Fido support.

Fido/Rogers, this is a real shame. My phone is indistinguishable from a Fido one and is fully compatible. Well, the only difference is that you didn't get the money...

It doesn't work because you don't allow non-Fido purchased phone based on their IMEI to register on these networks, for no reason. Some people had luck and customer support were able to add their IMEI in the database to get it work, but a lot, including me, don't. I had this luck with an unlocked iPhone 6 with Rogers (after "fighting" with the customer support for over 2 weeks), but this time, it's been a while I ask them but they say they're unable to do it, that the technical support will call me back in 24h-48h but they never call back or that they're unable to join them. There is no technical problem here, it is just an anti-consumer practice.

So I post this here for everyone to see and for people who might consider to bring their device to Fido to be warned about this (even though there are a lot of other post about this), and for you to see their real face, they're just greedy. To get $50+ for a few Gb isn't enough, they want you to buy the same phone you have from them.

And maybe a representent from Fido can help me to get the technical support to contact me to fix this problem before I give up?

What you, Fido/Rogers, seem to forget, is that people who bring their own devices do not have any contract, they can leave whenever they want. And as the CRTC ban the anti-consumer practice of locking cellphones and unlocking fees, people will be able to move between carriers freely, and it will be a real mess for you.

We are a lot in that case, you're going to lose a lot of clients. And don't forget you're not only in competition with other carriers but also with all VOIP services we have now, from Whatsapp to VOIP.ms

P.S. VoLTE and Wifi calling are no more "future technologies", they are today's technologies. LTE is the main network now, almost everybody use it, and you still prevent us to call on this network. As for Wifi Calling, it is important for people who live in basement or in the country side with a poor network quality. It also relieve the towers as there will be less network trafic.

[Wickkedd]

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@danthemanxwrote:

Hi @FidoNick, what do you mean VoLTE and Wifi calling "may work". We all know Fido purposely blocks IMS Services even though the phone is technically compatible and WILL work. You block phones that aren't purchased from Fido.

I challenge anyone to try this:

Place your sim in a phone purchased from Fido, VoLTE/Wifi Calling will work as expected.

Place your sim back into your non-Fido purchased phone, VoLTE/Wifi calling will still work for a couple of minutes at most until the system deprovisions you again.

Pretty ridiculous if you ask me.

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Indeed this is ridiculous...I would much rather buy a phone directly from Samsung, and I don't see the need to cripple it, as long as the feature is officially supported. If the phone can use these features for the first few minutes, that obviously shows that the phone IS compatible. Very stupid move by Fido / Rogers on this one.

Having said this, do you know if a Rogers purchased phone is on the whitelist for both Rogers and Fido? Or does it exclusively have to be from Fido, and not even Rogers? Thanks!

[danthemanx]

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@Wickkeddwrote:

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@danthemanxwrote:

Hi @FidoNick, what do you mean VoLTE and Wifi calling "may work". We all know Fido purposely blocks IMS Services even though the phone is technically compatible and WILL work. You block phones that aren't purchased from Fido.

I challenge anyone to try this:

Place your sim in a phone purchased from Fido, VoLTE/Wifi Calling will work as expected.

Place your sim back into your non-Fido purchased phone, VoLTE/Wifi calling will still work for a couple of minutes at most until the system deprovisions you again.

Pretty ridiculous if you ask me.

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Indeed this is ridiculous...I would much rather buy a phone directly from Samsung, and I don't see the need to cripple it, as long as the feature is officially supported. If the phone can use these features for the first few minutes, that obviously shows that the phone IS compatible. Very stupid move by Fido / Rogers on this one.

Having said this, do you know if a Rogers purchased phone is on the whitelist for both Rogers and Fido? Or does it exclusively have to be from Fido, and not even Rogers? Thanks!

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Good question... To be honest I don't really know what the criteria for their provisioning is, so I can't tell for sure if Rogers phones are also provisioned for IMS Services on the Fido network.

What's even weirder is I had a Videotron-purchased Galaxy phone prior to this one which had IMS Services as Registered for the entire duration of me owning the phone. When I asked them why that was they said "Your phone must've been purchased from Fido"... I said uhm no, it was a Videotron phone. The reason I could even enable VoLTE was because I changed the CSC to Fido on it.

So this makes it even more confusing as to how it gets provisioned or why it gets deprovisioned on their network.

Needless to say, the entire provisioning of Fido-purchased phones for VoLTE/Wifi Calling is really stupid at this point since ALL Canadian phones are now unlocked so who the heck cares where you bought your phone as long as it's the canadian variant of the phone. Why are my services getting disabled by the network? It's the same hardware AND software on my phone. "We cannot guarantee IMS services will work on your unlocked phone" Yeah, you're blocking the services. Start by not intervening then sure you can claim you can't guarantee it to work.

The whole point of BYOD is that you own a phone and you bring it to any network.

[BrianJM]

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@danthemanxwrote:

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since ALL Canadian phones are now unlocked

 ... carriers will have to find other ways to lock you into buying and financing your phone from them and perhaps blocking services for BYOD phones is how to make more phone and financing sales. It's all pretty dirty if that is what is actually going on.

[grreaghb]

It's pretty comical at this point watching Fido try to come up with different ways to say that VOLTE and Wifi Calling are not available to outside devices.  "It may work..." Nope.  Your network blocking makes sure that it doesn't work.  Shady practices all around on Fido/Rogers end, as is the status quo in Canada unfortunately.

[danthemanx]

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@grreaghbwrote:

It's pretty comical at this point watching Fido try to come up with different ways to say that VOLTE and Wifi Calling are not available to outside devices.  "It may work..." Nope.  Your network blocking makes sure that it doesn't work.  Shady practices all around on Fido/Rogers end, as is the status quo in Canada unfortunately.

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Agreed. Quite unfortunate...

[BrianJM]

Has anyone who has filed a CCTS/CRTC complaint gotten a response yet?

[Atomicbear]

I recently bought a FIDO iPhone 8, with Fido SIM card and I'm having the same issues.  I spent over 2 hours yesterday with support (that's another story entirely - I won't get into that right now) trying to enable WiFi calling.  I keep getting the message "To allow WiFi calling on this account, contact Fido".  So, it appears that even with a Fido purchased phone and SIM, they are having problems with enabling WiFi calling.  I've done everything I found on the internet to try to get it to work, including Reset Network Settings, having Fido "add" my IMEI to their "list", having Fido "Reset my account" (whatever that means), etc.  Still nothing.  I now have a level 3 ticket started to try to resolve this.  I'll update this post when and if I get a resolution.

[Zxaz]

Spoke to an agent yesterday on the french side......she even ask to the technicians!!   He (technicians) replied that when a new phone is out...they dont block it...it just that they privilege their phone first...for many people like us who bought their phone directly at samsung wich i prefere by far...we will have to wait a month or two the time they put all phone with subscription on their system....but at the end we gonna have volte and wifi call and all the option like the fido branded phone....

It just take some patience.......

[grreaghb]

That is completely untrue.  Fido only allows fido purchased phones to use VOLTE and Wifi calling, period.  This comes directly from the office of the president.  I opened a complaint with CCTS and Fido told me this directly. No grey area, no sometimes, they do not allow it.

[Zxaz]

Grreaghb Time will tell......last june i bought from samsung a s8+....around 3 week later i've tried the wifi calling and everything was working...volte everything....

I dont tell you that your wrong....but dont see what kind of interest fido would have to block their own customer? There is no grey aera since i have a canadians version..... Will have a look about it anyway.....will see in some week

[Cawtau]

Hello again,

  How do you explain the fact that there are non-Fido phones which are able to use those services?

  Fido does not block non-Fido phones from using those services. However, they can not guarantee that those services will work on a phone which was not purchased from Fido.

Cheers

[grreaghb]

Fido told me themselves, from the office of the president, that they in fact only allow Fido purchased phones to use this service. Period (iphones excluded).

I appreciate that you want to help people out, but you are completly wrong about this and that's not me saying that, it's Fido.  

[Zxaz]

grreaghb.....you know what...you were completly right about this....i have made call at the customer service lot of time to find an awnser to our problem and finally found the "culprit"....spoke to a "tech 2" at rogers...and he told me that its the politic of fido/rogers to give volte/wi-fi calling/video calling on fido branded phone!! for those like me who buy directely from samsung it will simply never work since fido dont have our imei number wich is crucial to have these option....however he put my phone imei on my account..so it should work..but 24 hours later still not...patience i guess..will see?   

just to give everybody an update with this problem..... 

[patrickchan]

hi

all i got was new sim card at Fido store, reset apn setting, reboot, should be good to go. 

[BrianJM]

@patrickchan To be honest, none of what you are saying makes any sense to me.  Why do I need a new SIM when I already have a Fido SIM?  What's a new Fido SIM going to do that the Fido SIM that I currently have doesn't?

And what does a "Hong Kong SIM" have to do with any of this?

And I don't know why you need to post 4 separate messages in a row.  Why not just say everything you need to say in one message?

[patrickchan]

hi

the hong kong sim card was used for the 1st boot up of the s9+ at the west edmonton mall samsung store, to avoid the Fido bloatware to be installed into the s9+.

i had an old 'lte' fido nano sim card (at least 2 years old), the Fido store at west edmonton mall gave me an new Fido nano sim card, and reset my apn settings from 'proxy mmsfido.com' to 'MMS Proxy: 205.151.11.13. and after reboot it works,

as long as ur samsung is purchased in canada. it should work.

[danthemanx]

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@BrianJM wrote:

@patrickchan To be honest, none of what you are saying makes any sense to me.  Why do I need a new SIM when I already have a Fido SIM?  What's a new Fido SIM going to do that the Fido SIM that I currently have doesn't?

And what does a "Hong Kong SIM" have to do with any of this?

And I don't know why you need to post 4 separate messages in a row.  Why not just say everything you need to say in one message?

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Haha. Yeah with all due respect, forget what patrickchan is saying.

Why would we replace our LTE sim cards with a brand new LTE sim card from Fido? Makes no sense.

Also, I have seen my unlocked phone and sim card working with VoLTE and Wifi calling.

The proof? Just put your sim in a Fido-purchased phone, wait a bit, then place it back in your unlocked phone, these services will be provisioned temporarily then deprovisioned.

I totally agree with quenting96's last message. This really sucks, what's the point of BYOD plans in Canada if you're forced to purchase the phone from a specific carrier or else you don't get IMS Services (VoLTE/Wifi Calling). Especially when our **bleep** phone is the CANADIAN variant, not an international unlocked variant or anything. When you buy the device from BestBuy or somewhere else in Canada, you get the Canadian variant which is identical in every way to the phone purchased directly from the carrier.

My S9 is the SM-G960W.

[Zxaz]

danthemanx    it seem that some provider doesn"t care about this...have called one and he told me that i would have volte/wifi calling/video call right away..he toldm me that only a canadians variant sm-g960/5 w in our case is needed...going to check this fact over the next week-end...and if its really the case...then fido/rogers just gonna lost another subscriber.....

[FidoSaad]

Hey Zxaz,

I assure you that your feedback has been noted. That being said, non-Fido Android devices are currently not supported for Wi-Fi calling from our end.

Let us know if you have any questions.

[BrianJM]

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@FidoSaad wrote:

Hey Zxaz,

I assure you that your feedback has been noted. That being said, non-Fido Android devices are currently not supported for Wi-Fi calling from our end.

So you (all) keep saying. What you repeatedly won't say is why. You only leave us to surmise that this is just yet another Canadian mobile telco oligopoly lock-in tactic to sell phones. As much as you incumbent providers hate to hear about wholesale-MVNOs, this is the ONLY to your predatory tactics.

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@FidoSaad

Let us know if you have any questions. 

How about answering the above question about why Fido are locking our BYODs from all but the most bare of phone functionality. Are phone sales really that profitable that you will have potential customers not come to (or leave) Fido just because you didn't get to sell the phone?

[FidoThomas]

Hey @BrianJM,

I get where you're coming from, it's understandable! Alas, currently we do no support Wi-Fi calling and VoLTE with non-Fido Android devices, it's a business decision that we took. We work with device manufacturers to bring this capability to our customers and currently offer it on most devices on the market.

That being said, we truly value your feedback as we want to offer services that correspond to our customers needs. Telling us what you want is the best way to see the changes you need