Verizon Wireless Phones Call Failures
Update 11-5-2025 . We made 200 test calls and all 200 passed.
The issue was
Verizon Wireless phones in wi-fi calling mode failed to reach your Infotel Systems provided phone system or the call has no audio. The issue appears to be cleared on 11-5-2025 by Verizon making a routing change.
We tested and 200 calls in a row passed from Verizon Wireless (wi-fi mode) to Infotel Systems NOC.
The other issues is Verizon Wireless has a possibly discriminatory NOC-to-NOC trouble reporting interface for non-peering carriers.
The technical details
Dependent on time of day, we measured call failures from 2% to 22% of the time. The issue was specifically with a handoff from Verizon Wireless to an intermediate carrier before Lumen and before Infotel Systems facilities. Reaching the failing equipment was and is dependent on the volume of voice traffic occuring at a time of day. 3 am would be low volume. Drive times of 8am and 5pm may be high volume.
Cross check- Non Infotel customers also fail.
These Virgina businesses are NOT our customers. From a Verizon wireless phone in wifi calling mode we called up to 50 times to the automated attendants of these companies and recreated the results.
- 804-330-8888 – WRIC (ABC affiliate)
- 804-877-4000 – SHELTERING ARMS
- 804-748-9177 -Iron Bridge Recovery Center
- 804-377-4145 – Wegmans
- 804-273-9276 – Costco
- 804-285-8206 – Gastrointestinal Specialists, Inc
- 804-205-3408 – Thriveworks Counseling – Richmond
- 804-492-4442 – Cumberland County Courts
- 804-526-5566 – Bon Secours Medical Office (one of many)
(and many more)
Our actions to fix
We reported the issue to Verizon Wireless and Lumen. We have written acknowledgement and ownership of the problem by Verizon Wireless as described above.
What you can do in the future
- Tell callers to turn off wi-fi calling. (Google this)
- Report the issue to Verizon wireless as “Calls from Verizon number 80x-xxx-yyy fail to your (your business number), or the above listed numbers. This will take 45 minutes of your time.
- Send us an email to service123@infotelsystems.com the results of the test in blue.
- Record your bad calls or the first good call from someone who previously failed by;
- Yealink phone: dialing #0 during an active call.
- Panasonic phone: Manually record the calling phone number and time of call.
* Lumen.com is 4 to 20 x larger than every other backbone wholesale VoIP carriers serving Virginia business. Lumen absorbed level3.com that literally stared the public Internet with Autonomous System number of 1 . Verizon business is ASN 2.
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FCC research of DA-15-74 Adopted: January 26, 2015
We are vetting weather DA-15-74 is similar to our issue and how it was handled with Verizon.
Our edited version of Verizon Consent Decree to FCC
To settle this matter, Verizon admits that it failed to investigate the cause of low call answer rates in 26 rural areas, and will pay a $2,000,000 fine. Prospectively,Verizon also will implement a compliance plan in which it will spend an additional $3,000,000 on measures to advance and achieve Company and industry solutions to rural call completion problems.
FCC rulings pertainent to the current issue
II. BACKGROUND
3. Section 201(b) of the Act provides that ….practices, … shall be just and reasonable, and any… practice…that is unjust or unreasonable is declared to be unlawful.”
4. The Commission has emphasized that “permitting blocking or the refusal to deliver voice telephone traffic, …to address perceived unreasonable intercarrier compensation charges.. risks ‘degradation of the country’s telecommunications network.’” …… telecommunications carriers, including interexchange carriers, generally may not “‘block, choke, reduce or restrict traffic in any way.’”
5. epidemic” of calls to … failing to complete or having poor call quality.
6. …carrier that knows or should know that calls are not being completed …and that engages in acts (or omissions) that allow or effectively allow these conditions to persist, may be liable for a violation of section 201 of the Act.” … it is an unjust and unreasonable practice in violation of section 201 …providing degraded service fail to correct the problem or to fail to ensure that intermediate providers, least-cost routers, or other entities acting adopting or perpetuating routing practices that result in lower quality service to… high-cost localities than
18. Compliance Plan section (a)
[2] Investigations:- B Checklist: …Performance of milliwatt testing (This is how we test)
- G. Verizon will remove from routing any Intermediate Provider that it uses that it has reason to believe is causing call completion problems, or will work cooperatively with each such Intermediate Provider to analyze and resolve such problems as soon as practicable.
Verizon will route such traffic through Intermediate Providers only if the initial Intermediate Provider .. has committed to terminate traffic to the…(end switch) or through no more than one additional Intermediate Provider.
Our summary
We can prove that Verizon Wireless calls in wi-fi mode complete with 100% success on multiple 50 call “milliwatt target” calls (Verizon approved method) to a Verizon peering carrier we use but failed up to 22% (time of day) with Lumen. This behavior is possibly related to the red highlighted sections above.
By FCC DA-15-74, Verizon must not discriminate and provide equally direct or quality one hop connection to Lumen as such routes exist. They also must monitor and correct connection failures.
Acceptable path = Verizon Wireless –> Verizon Business –> Lumen – -> Infotel Systems
Current path = Verizon Wireless –> ??? wholesale IP voice aggregator –> Cogent –> Lumen – -> Infotel Systems
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47 C.F.R. §64.210x
47 C.F.R. §64.2101 Definitions
“Covered provider” ” …. may be a local exchange carrier … an interexchange carrier …a provider of commercial mobile radio service as defined in …r, a provider of interconnected voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service … or a provider of non-interconnected VoIP service as defined.
Long-distance voice service. “long-distance voice service” includes interstate interLATA, intrastate interLATA, interstate interexchange, intrastate interexchange, intraLATA toll, inter-MTA interstate and inter-MTA intrastate voice services.
47 C.F.R. §64.2105(a)(6)
The test below is our preemptive plan sould this happene again.
Verizon Wireless is required to retain and identify all intermediate providers used in routing call attempts to our Lumen-served numbers, to the extent the information is available, and under §64.2105(c) must produce this information upon request to the Commission.
We may formally request the identification of intermediate carriers being used to route Verizon Wireless mobile-originated calls to our OCN(s), for the purpose of compliance review related to call completion performance and the DA-15-74 consent decree monitoring obligations.