Phone Questions & Advice

[spork]

A search did not reveal a general discussion on phones or phone service, so here goes, with some information I learned today:

I use Ting, an MVNO, because it is far cheaper than a plan with one of the networks. The Ting SIM card in my phone, a Samsung Galaxy S3, connects to the T-Mobile network. For years I've had problems with incoming calls from certain numbers going straight to voicemail and my phone not ringing. Lately this has gotten more frequent and increasingly annoying. Also it seemed like signal strength and connection quality, always mediocre, was getting worse. I started doing research, expecting that my phone's operating system and hardware just weren't cutting it anymore. Lo and behold, I found out that my phone might not have VoLTE (voice over LTE) capability and that T-Mobile will end its service for non-VoLTE phones as of January 31. If you have an old phone and use T-Mobile, you might lose service at the end of the month.

When I contacted Ting chat support to ask what my options were, I was told I'd be sent a Verizon SIM card for free, this will most likely fix my problems, and I won't have to buy a new phone.