When Will Prepaid/GoPhone Allow for WiFi Calling?

Yeah, @Anonymous, be very careful here.

Even if you go postpaid, you MUST HAVE A BRANDED DEVICE, NOT a cell phone that's unbranded, or from another carrier.  This is important to understand/clarify, such that expectations are correct here.

@ATTMobilityCare I'd suggest ammending this, so the "clarified" info is part of the post.  Users MUST have a Branded Device (Android, Windows Phone), and be withing the (small-ish)subset of devices allowed.

The one exception is if you have an iOS device, (>=6 I'm pretty sure), you can have an un-branded device, IF you are postpaid.

For example, if you have an unbranded Nexus 5x device, while it's WiFi call/text capable, it's not WiFi call/text allowed or provisioned, at this point (many of us are hoping for a change here).

@mwyson

Yes.   ATT is behind as the last prepaid to adopt this.

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@gfc3000 wrote:

With LTE only sites, it will be a matter of time until someone has signal but not be able to complete a 911 call.

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That might be true if att only had LTE sights but they still have hspa on all the towers I have ever connected to.

Hi @mc59comm!

Wi-Fi calling is a super handy feature, so I don’t fault you at all for wanting to take advantage of it!

My apologies for the misinformation you were given, at the moment we do not have any ETA for when this feature will roll out for GoPhone!

If you would like to take advantage of this feature and other cool features we have to offer, I would suggest converting to a post-paid plan!

I appreciate you reaching out! Let us know, if you’d like to report the employee in question gave you the bad information.

Have a great day and thanks for reaching out!

Tim, AT&T Community Specialist

Thank you for your reply. While I am not interested in reporting the employee (I think it was an honest mistake) I would like to encourage AT&T to offer WiFi calling for prepaid customers as soon as possible. Why hold back that one feature just because someone is on a prepaid plan and risk losing them to a carrier who doesn't penalize prepaid customers in that manner? Just doesn't seem to make much business sense. I am otherwise satisfied with my service so far and hope AT&T will offer WiFi calling soon so that I am not in a position of having to decide between going to a postpaid AT&T plan or switching carriers.

Hi @pgrey!

Thank you for the clarification that is a very important caveat, my apologies for not including it!

I appreciate your efforts to make sure our information here is as accurate as possible!

Tim, AT&T Community Specialist

I have an unlocked iPhone SE purchased at an Apple store. I am not sure what is meant by "BRANDED" or "UNBRANDED." I assume if I switched to postpaid that my phone, which is currently running iOS 9.5.3 and is WiFi-call capable, would be able to utilize that feature but now I am a bit confused again by the term UNBRANDED.

This whole issue could be easily simplified if AT&T would just do what some other prepaid carriers are doing and allow for WiFi calling on prepaid accounts. Of course the phone would have to be capable of WiFi calling, but I just don't understand why AT&T is sort of penalizing prepaid customers by not making this feature available. As I said before, it's not a very good way of earning the trust or loyality of customers by needllessly withholding a feature. I mean I paid decent money upfront for a phone, was told it would have access to everything on the AT&T network, only to find out it doesn't. And now I am hearing that even if I go to postpaid I still might not get WiFi calling. Ridiculous.

AT&T, can you provide an explaination (technical or business-wise) as to why WiFi calling isn't available to prepaid customers? I'd really like to understand the reasoning behind this before making a decision as to what to do about it.

@Anonymous This is a customer to customer forum. You likely won't get an ATT explanation for not supporting wifi calling on prepaid. The best you will get is response #2 above from ATTCares that hints wifi calling might come to prepaid sometime. 

What confuses me about this is that on $45 GoPhone plan I have unlimited calling.

So what would AT&T think they're gaining or losing my by not offering me wifi calling? 

Wifi calling requires being in an HD voice service area and an HD voice, (or Voice calls over LTE)

Prepaid accounts do not get VoLTE so thy don't get wifi calling.  

At least not yet. 

A branded device will have a carrier boot screen, which iPhone does not.  Because iPhone has only one iOS, it is easy for carriers to program for the phone.  Android has so many variations that carriers can't account for them all, so they chose to account for only their own branded phones.