Three has just made huge steps to essentially eliminating signal blackspots, as now customers can seamlessly call and text over Wi-Fi.
That means if you don’t have a mobile signal you can still stay in touch with people over Wi-Fi, and you don’t even need a separate app to do it – all your calls and texts can be made in received in the usual way.
This is a big deal, as while Three’s coverage is fairly comprehensive all the networks have some black spots, and indoor locations are often more likely to have them, as the signal can struggle to pass through walls. Of course, indoor locations are also where you’re most likely to find a Wi-Fi network, which means you should essentially have perfect Three coverage at home, work and anywhere with public Wi-Fi, even if you struggled to get a signal before.
That includes spots you’d never think you’d be able to call or text from, like the London Underground, and with new public Wi-Fi networks popping up all the time, this feature is only going to get more useful.
Three already offered Wi-Fi Calling of a sort, but until now a separate Three inTouch app was required, so it wasn’t seamless and meant that you’d have two sets of call logs and texts – those from Three inTouch and those from your normal dialler and SMS app.
This Wi-Fi Calling upgrade isn’t yet available to all handsets though. iOS users need to be on version 10.2 or above and using an iPhone 5C, iPhone 5S, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone SE, iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus. While Android users must be using an LG G5, Samsung Galaxy S6 or Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge.
The wildly popular Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge will be getting support from mid-February and we’d expect to see this feature arrive on other handsets in the future too.
On Android, once you have this embedded Wi-Fi feature you won’t need to do anything to enable it, you’ll just find you can suddenly text and call over Wi-Fi. On iOS, you need to enable it by heading to Settings > Phone > WiFi Calling.
In either case, once you have Wi-Fi Calling you’ll be able to delete Three inTouch, and you’ll even get a pop-up alerting you to that fact.
This follows on from Three's 4G Super-Voice service which lets you call over 4G, and brings Three one step closer to crushing blackspots completely.
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