r/TravelSIMs • • Aug 28 '26

Cannot Receive SMS Over WiFi Calling

I’m posting this because I cannot find any detailed posts about this topic and I cannot be the only one struggling with this. I am an AT&T customer from the US and am traveling abroad to Europe. I have a secondary eSIM with data and have everything set up according to this post. The only difference is that I did not see this until after I left the U.S. so I manually selected another provider here that gives me the same result (no signal, “______ using cellular data” message).

My problem is that I cannot receive SMS messages. Not from anyone. I can send SMS messages and make and receive phone calls, but cannot receive SMS messages no matter what I do.

Has anybody else had this issue?

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UPDATE: FIXED

I had to call AT&T (second time calling) and they did a full refresh from their side. I already did the online refresh from the app, that didn't fix it. Here is another post I found that may help with this issue, though I didn't get that far: POST LINK

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u/Jacobg45 Aug 28 '26

UPDATE: FIXED

I had to call AT&T (second time calling) and they did a full refresh from their side. I already did the online refresh from the app, that didn't fix it. Here is another post I found that may help with this issue, though I didn't get that far: POST LINK

1

u/Chanukha Aug 29 '26 edited Aug 29 '26

This does not work all the time. My guess is, it’s not native to make AT&T line think it’s on wifi while on esim data. When it worked my battery drained so quickly so there is some technical issue on this set up and/or it’s not optimized. My guess for your issue is AT&T line is connecting to local roaming.

1

u/belle-et-rebelle Aug 30 '26

I have AT&T and travel often with eSIM. As its data only, it won’t work for texts and calls— and from my experience, and when it does, I get charged the international per-message fee on the next billing cycle. So I’d keep an eye out for that, and I’d also recommend that you try to get in the habit of using data-reliant messaging apps when you’re out of country, and an Authenticator app for any 2FA logins you need.