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Phone calls to iPhone go straight to voicemail

Many times when receiving an incoming call, the call goes straight to voicemail. 'Do Not Disturb' is not turned on. I do not have people blocked from calling me. How do I fix this issue?

iPhone 6, iOS 11

Posted on May 5, 2020 4:02 PM

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Posted on May 15, 2020 8:50 AM

I had the same problem , except no incoming calls were getting through, all sending directly to Voicemail. After talking to my carrier for over half an hour and Apple Chat Line for about as long, it still was not receiving calls. Everything else worked, iMessage, FaceTime, outgoing calls, even voicemail once I got it set up. At the top left of the phone I had plenty of bars and the name of the carrier next to which was LTE.

I got it working myself! I was going through EVERY THING in my settings directory for the hundredth time, just about to give up and see if I could send the phone back. When I found this that got it working: in SETTINGS go to CELLULAR/CELLULAR DATA OPTIONS/VOICE & DATA. I switched it from LTE to 3G. Now it receives calls, no problem. Apparently I don’t have LTE service. Maybe you don’t either.

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Question marked as Best reply

May 15, 2020 8:50 AM in response to mkearia

I had the same problem , except no incoming calls were getting through, all sending directly to Voicemail. After talking to my carrier for over half an hour and Apple Chat Line for about as long, it still was not receiving calls. Everything else worked, iMessage, FaceTime, outgoing calls, even voicemail once I got it set up. At the top left of the phone I had plenty of bars and the name of the carrier next to which was LTE.

I got it working myself! I was going through EVERY THING in my settings directory for the hundredth time, just about to give up and see if I could send the phone back. When I found this that got it working: in SETTINGS go to CELLULAR/CELLULAR DATA OPTIONS/VOICE & DATA. I switched it from LTE to 3G. Now it receives calls, no problem. Apparently I don’t have LTE service. Maybe you don’t either.

Jul 28, 2020 6:36 AM in response to HayleyC12

FIRST: Are the missed calls in Phone/Recents on the phone? If they are not the problem is in the network, because the calls aren’t getting to your phone. Contact your carrier. If they are in Recents here’s what to check:

  • Check the MUTE switch on the left side of the phone, above the volume buttons. It should be towards the screen
  • Check the volume setting. With the Home screen displayed, press the VOLUME UP button on the left side of the phone. It’s above the VOLUME DOWN button.
  • Go to Settings/Do not Disturb. Turn it off if it is on. Also turn off Scheduled. With both off none of the other switches there matter.
  • Go to Settings/Phone. There’s a switch for Silence Unknown Callers. If it is on any calls from numbers not in your contacts will go directly to voicemail.
  • Also in Settings/Phone: Make sure Call Forwarding is off.
  • Go to Settings/Sounds & Haptics. Make sure there is a sound assigned to Ringtone.
  • check with your carrier that they don’t have a local outage, and that you didn’t have any settings that would have immediately invoked voicemail
  • check up on them at Down Detector - outages


May 5, 2020 5:35 PM in response to mkearia

Calls will go to voicemail if your phone can’t be located by the carrier’s network, or if the signal strength is too weak for a reliable connection. Do you see the calls in your Recents list in the phone app? If not, the calls are not reaching your phone. With some carriers that don’t support simultaneous voice and data if you are using cellular data actively the call can’t go to the phone. There are fewer and fewer carriers with this problem; it is almost exclusively CDMA carriers that do not also support LTE. In the US, if that is where you are, those are mostly rural carriers that are partners of Verizon or Sprint. And sometimes the local towers are overloaded (especially during this pandemic) and there are no open channels to route the call.


If it happens to all calls you may have call forwarding enabled, but from you description it is only some calls, so that probably is not the issue.

May 15, 2020 10:13 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

Hi Lawrence! I´m puzzled by your response to the OP to " turn off Silence Unknown Callers", and his response to you! The OP states he's running iOS 11, and as far as I know "Silence Unknown Callers" is a feature first introduced with iOS 13. My iPhone X (12.4.1) has no such feature...I´d be using it if it did! I know how to block specific calls, but that's not the same. Am I misunderstanding something here, or could "Silence Unknown Callers" be a feature only available with iPhones sold in the USA? Thanks! Ian.

Phone calls to iPhone go straight to voicemail

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