Thursday, October 9, 2014

iPhone 6 and Verizon Problems - Solved!

I don't normally write about tech even though it is a huge part of my life. But recently I was having two major problems with my new iPhone 6 on Verizon. I couldn't find the solution on line, so when I finally figured it out I thought I'd share.

Since picking up my iPhone 6 on launch day I have had two problems:

#1 Voice and Data could NOT be used together even though I had been specifically told they would work at the same time on the 6.

#2 My Voicemail was not working. I kept getting "Sorry your account has no access to the system. Please consult your system administrator."

Voicemail not working wasn't really a problem for me. Most people don't call me, they text. If they do call and leave a message 99% of the time it says, "call me back." So it wasn't a priority to get voicemail working until I realized my wife's phone was having the same problem. After some fiddling I discovered both problems stemmed from the same issue: Voice and Data over LTE.

Here's how I fixed it.
I went to Settings>Cellular>Enable LTE and changed it to Voice & Data.  (It was just set to Data.)To my surprise this fixed both problems. Apparently this enables Verizon's voLTE feature. Calls do sound clearer, but not nearly as clear as FaceTime Audio calls. From what I've read voLTE does not use your data allotment, but counts as minutes on your plan. And the best part is Data and Voice now work at the same time.