WhatsApp calls not working anymore

[leSpring]

Dear AndroidCentral people,

I have a very new issue with WhatsApp (and Skype) calls, that's been going on since yesterday.

I am living in Ireland and have been using WhatsApp on the Samsung Galaxy S5 for a long time, never had any issues, works perfectly fine.

Lately I have been doing a lot of phonecalls with a friend in Switzerland which worked perfectly fine. She is usually in proper wifi connection (with a HTC One or similar, definitely HTC) whereas I am on full 4G, this has worked very well for about 2 weeks.

Nevertheless, since yesterday (actually since the new Privacy Settings) the calling is not working anymore at all :
- if I try to call her the app sounds the ringing tone and shows that it's connecting. And it just stays on that indefinitely, it doesn't ever connect and there's nothing happening. My friend on the other side doesn't see anything happening.
- if she tries to call me I don't see anything happening and she receives the information that I am busy or already in a call and that I can't answer her call (something like that)

We have both tried to improve our connections but it doesn't make any difference. On rare occasions it happened that she called me and I could answer the call, however it immediately shows again that the app is trying to connect until the call drops. Neither of us can hear the other one...

The most curious thing now is : we have tried swapping to Skype as we couldn't figure out what's going on with WhatsApp. And low and behold, the exact same thing happens there!

So obviously the issue is somewhere either with my or her phone, but I couldn't tell what the issues is. As mentioned, it worked fine on multiple occasions during the last two weeks. The issue has only been happening since yesterday (Monday, 29th of August 2016).

Also, text messages work perfectly fine both on WhatsApp and Skype...

It would be great if someone had some idea how this issue could be resolved, as international calls between Ireland and Switzerland are pretty expensive... And I have a feeling the issue might also exist with different VoiP providers (Viber and so on...), as it's happening with Skype and WA!

Any help is greatly appreciated! Let me know if you need any further details or anything to figure this out...

Thank you very much,
David

 

[SpookDroid]

Have any of you tried connecting to a different network? I just tested it and Whatsapp, Skype, and Facebook Messenger calls work fine.

 

[leSpring]

How do you mean, connecting to a different network as in from 4G to WiFi or "verizon" to "at&t" or something else entirely? Unfortunately I have no possibility to go to a WiFi network in the immediate vicinity (we can't get broadband at home...), but I'll ask her to try connecting via 4G instead of her home WiFi the next time, see if that makes a difference!

Thank you!

And sorry if I'm being daft, but I'm not very well used to all these issues, I usually just use my phone and expect it to work!

 

[SpookDroid]

Just trying to see if maybe something changed in the network you're using or her WiFi that might be blocking these calls. Usually you try going from one WiFi to another if that's the case.

Have you tried calling other contacts? Has she? I'd try to see if the issue is with both phones or just one of them if other contacts can be reached.

 

[Abdul Rahim Mohamed]

Setup SIP in both your mobile and see if that works.

How To Setup SIP Account For VoIP Calling On Android Without Google Voice Or Skype - Pcnexus

 

[leSpring]

Thank you SpookDroid for your great explanations!

She has been in contact with her broadband provider and apparently there have been some issues from that side! We will try it again today with her using mobile data instead of the wifi, see if that helps the problem! We should have thought of that first off anyway, but yeah...

If not we'll try what you suggested, calling other contacts and see if the issue lies only with one phone or if it's something else altogether.

Thank you very much for your help! I'll keep you posted!

 

[leSpring]

Thank you Abdul Rahim Mohamed also for the link, I've never heard of SIP! We might give that a try as well if all else fails, fingers crossed it's just her WiFi that's acting up and we won't have to go through more complicated ways as she is even less tech-savy as me and probably would be lost with setting up SIP!

But thank you very much for your help!

 

[SpookDroid]

Let us know how it went! Hopefully you'll be able to get it resolved soon

 

[leSpring]

So, it has indeed been resolved. It turned out that the WhatsApp call worked just fine once she changed from her wifi to 4G. Apparently their broadband provider has some issues which affected the quality of their broadband signal. We had perfect quality over an about 40min call yesterday with both of us on 4G.

Thank you SpookDroid for coming up with this in hindsight rather easy and obvious solution! It's much appreciated and if I hadn't come here I probably would have gotten her to delete the app and god knows what kind of other awkward solutions, when it could have been that easy!

So yeah, thank you!

 

[SpookDroid]

Glad it helped! And hope the WiFi issue gets fixed! If she's on a metered connection, that's no bueno!