Total Wireless APN/SMS Issues

[Nelson Phillips]

We switched from Verizon to Total Wireless in September with the family plan, 4 byo phones.

My wife and kids phones all work perfectly, no issues.

My Galaxy S7 Edge, however, keeps losing the ability to SMS text. It will be gone for a day, then back for a day, and I often never know when SMS is gone until I get 12 texts in a row.

During these outages I've noticed that the phone says "searching for service", even though 4G internet and regular calls work just fine.

I also noticed that during these outages the APN data is blank, and it's greyed out so I can't make any changes to it, nor can I add a new APN.

My phone functioned perfectly on Verizon. I don't understand what the issue is, and Total Wireless has been less than no help at all. How many times must I factory reset?

They're now telling me it's my phone... But it's been my experience that they're idiots. Does anyone have any idea what is happening, and how I can fix it?

 

[Rukbat]

First, APN is related to the web. Text is 2G (like voice), not the web (unless the text is over 160 characters and you have your SMS app set to not break up texts - that forces it to send long texts as data, which requires an APN).

Since I can't seem to find listings for stores, I'd call tech support (or even customer service) and ask them to please reprovision your number. (That would require removing it from their database, then entering it again.) The normal reasons for losing service (which means that you have no voice service wither) are losing connection with the SIM card for GSM carriers. Since you're on a CDMA carrier (Verizon is still your carrier, Total Wireless is your MVNO), you should still maintain service with no SIM card, so it's probably faulty provisioning. (But if it persists after reprovisioning, I'd insist on a new SIM card.)

It's possible (but highly unlikely with a phone that young, unless it's been subjected to a lot of drops or other hits, that the SIM port is loose. But I'd go for bad provisioning or a bad SIM card first (unless I knew that the phone had been mistreated - then I'd suspect the port first).

 

[xccess]

I was the same boat but now I got my hot spot to work for call while using data at the same time.. follow this

https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-note-8/how-to/guide-enable-hotspot-t3675986

then using this for entry, I used the first options

https://bestmvno.com/apn-settings/total-wireless-apn-settings/