"Accept and Hold" on iPhone possible rather than voicemail?

[musicmaker]

I just switched from an EE sim as the signal is poor whereas the Virgin over O2 network is decent. Problem solved, but whereas previously if a second call was received there was an option to accept the new call and hold or end the first one, with Virgin the other call goes to voicemail without any obvious indication there was a call; being able to accept the new call is much better.

Keen to know if this ability is supported in any way with Virgin, and if so, how can this be enabled?

[Kain_W]

Hi musicmaker,

Thanks for your post and welcome to the community.

Can i ask regarding this, what handset do you have?

Let us know,

[musicmaker]

Hi,

Thanks, it's an iphone X.

[Kain_W]

Thanks for the response, 

Accept and hold should still be appearing, when people are contacting are they going straight through to voicemail all the time?

Regards,

[musicmaker]

So far yes for a few occasions, with no indication that a second call was occurring at the time. The SIM is a pay monthly in case that makes any difference.

[Kain_W]

Right okay, 

Can I ask regarding the Phone, is it updated to the latest iOS?

Also just to clarify, are no calls whatsover showing the end & accept message?

Thanks again,

[musicmaker]

Yes, no overlapping calls have given the end & accept message.
Despite automatic updates enabled, the phone is on 15.6 so not quite the latest 15.7. Installing 16 may be tricky due to space limitations but I'll see what can be done and retest.

[Natalie_L]

Thank you musicmaker. 

Please let us know once the update has taken place and if the feature becomes available 🙂 

If not, we will do all we can to assist further. 

Thanks, 

[musicmaker]

I tried again having setup a call with one phone and then calling from another, and had the message saying "sorry, but the person you called isn't available at the moment", and the invite to leave a voice message. So still the same problem with the latest iOS 15. I can't update to 16, but that shouldn't matter as the feature was working with a previous EE sim for many months and various earlier versions of the OS.  Wondering though if the behaviour was different previously because I didn't have VM setup with EE, and voicemail is prioritised over being offered to accept a new call.

[musicmaker]

Ok, finally solved, and it's simply that the call waiting feature became disabled after the sim switch. I hadn't hit on any google results to indicate what feature would give the missing behaviour and no one suggested "have you checked that xyz feature" is turned on, but digging through phone settings i hit on it. Thanks for sticking with the issue.